


A Darkness in Bloom

by Snowgrouse



Series: Of Roses Unfurling [19]
Category: Thief of Bagdad (1940), كتاب ألف ليلة وليلة | Kitaab 'alf layla wa-layla | One Thousand and One Nights
Genre: Age Difference, Anal Fingering, Anal Foam, Anal Gaping, Anal Play, Anal Sex, Anal Sex (female receiving), Androgynous male character, Ass to Mouth, BDSM, Big Cocks, Bisexual Female Character, Bisexual Male Character, Blood and Gore, Bondage, Caning, Cat/Human Hybrids, Cheetahs, Clawing, Conflict During Sex, Conjugal Bliss, Cowgirl Position, Cunnilingus, Dark Het, Deepthroating, Defiance of toxic heterosexual relationship behaviours, Depression Recovery, Dominant Androgynous Male Character, Dominant Male Character, Double Penetration, Double Penetration in One Hole, Double Penetration in Two Holes, Dysmenorrhea, F/M, Fantasy, Fellatio, Female sexual agency, Feminist Themes, Fluff, Foursome, Foursome - F/M/M/M, Gangbang, Ghost Cats, Ghost Panthers, Ghost Sex, Girls' Night, Hair-pulling, Hard BDSM, Healing, Healing Sex, Heterosexual Anal Sex (female receiving), Historical, Historical Erotic Romance, Historical Romance, Hurt/Comfort, Illusions, Illusory Sex Panthers, Illusory Sex Partners, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Intelligent Submissive Female Character, Islamic Metaphysics, M/M, Magic as sex aid, Magic-Users, Magical Bestiality, Male to Female Menstrual Hurt/Comfort, Married Couple, Medical Procedures, Medical Trauma, Medieval Medicine, Menstrual Sex, Menstrual hurt/comfort, Menstruation, Metaphysics, Middle Ages, Middle East, Missionary Position, Moresomes, Multi, Multiple Penetration, Muslim characters, Nursing, Older Man/Younger Woman, Opium, Other, PMS, POV Bisexual Character, Pards, Penetration with tongue, Period Attitudes Towards Sexuality and Gender, Polyamory, Premenstrual dysphoria, Quadruple Penetration, Queer Het, Recreational Drug Use, Rimming, Romance, Service Top, Sex Magic, Spirit World, Spiritual sex, Spitroasting, Submissive Female Character, Suspension Bondage, Telepathic Bondage, Telepathic Sex, Telepathy, Tenderness, Tending, The Golden Age of Islam, The Thousand And One Nights - Freeform, Tongues, Triple Penetration, Vaginal Sex, Wine, ass to other person's mouth, big cats, costume porn, erotic romance, gagging, heterosexual anal sex, medical drug use, panthers, resolved conflict
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-04-12
Packaged: 2018-10-15 04:13:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 34,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10549888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snowgrouse/pseuds/Snowgrouse
Summary: When Yassamin is tormented by fantasies so dangerous she daren't even speak of them out loud, it falls to Jaffar to excavate them from her self. Once found, he vows to bring to life even the most perverse of her desires: he sets out to create for her multiple shadow-lovers with his magics, lovers human and animal, all ravishing her at once.***"I am going toundo you," Jaffar tells her as he stalks around her with the gait of a great cat, tracing the soft nakedness of her belly with the tip of his cane. "So unravel you that none of this...wretch," he snaps and flicks her hair back with the cane, making her gasp and jerk back in her bonds, "shall remain."He lets her dance there upon her toes for a moment, hanging as she does by her wrists in the centre of the room, suspended by his magic bonds from the low, vaulted ceiling.Slowly, he drags the tip of his cane up to her throat, lifting her chin with it. "Just as an automaton that's rusted and damaged needs to be undone piece by piece to be cleansed, strengthened, mended, so am I to take you apart, piece by piece, until thismockery,thisgrotesque,thistravestyof your true self is no more."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to Indigomage and Anne W, because their combined helpfulness and resourcefulness and patience (with crazies like yours truly) have contributed a great deal to the character of Zahra. You guys are awesome. Keep up the good work.

  
***

_"A cunny is more in need of two pricks [to sate itself] than a prick is in need of two cunnies."_

-Dananir the Poetess, protégée of the Barmakids, circa 800 CE

***

"We never got to finish that game," Yassamin says as she caresses Jaffar's chest idly, tracing patterns onto his freshly oiled skin with her fingertips.

"What game?" Jaffar mumbles, his arm over his eyes, he already half asleep upon the fresh, crisp sheets. 

He and Yassamin have retreated to their love-chamber straight from their Thursday bath: however, today is one of those days when neither cares whether there will be sex or not, both of them desiring closeness, intimacy and privacy first and foremost.

"That game my lord wished to play with his slave girl," Yassamin murmurs, resting her head upon his shoulder, her damp, perfumed hair entwining with his. "Where he asked her to tell him what she thought of his each body part."

He chuckles and takes his arm from his face, his eyes flashing pale in the setting sun's light. "I sense there is something you'd like to tell me, my sweet?" he says, his chin tripling as he glances down at his belly, covered by a thick cotton towel still. "And here I thought these stripes slimming."

"You silly old fool," she laughs and pats his belly. "I doubt my cheetah will ever become a fat house-cat."

"Aye," he says, now grinning wildly, "Despite having been tamed and fed on a steady diet of marzipan and cream!" he purr-growls and takes a pretend-bite off Yassamin's indeed creamy shoulder, earning himself a yelp. "But, come. I shan't protest," he says and unties his towel, tossing it into her hands with a flourish. "I am all yours to judge," he chuckles and twiddles his toes, jiggling his freshly shaven and oiled genitals at her, their luxurious smoothness always to him a pleasure in and of itself.

But it is then that she folds the towel neatly and lays it over his groin. "It was thanks to these that I got distracted the last time," she explains, laughing at his exaggerated pout; "I have gone over them already!"

"Refresh my memory?" he mock-frowns. "I am an old man; my memory isn't what it used to be."

"In my own time," she but murmurs playfully.

Now, to Jaffar's great pleasure, she undoes her own towel and lies there on her right side, cupping her left breast with her hand as she gazes at him, taking her time before she begins.

"What do you see, then, my lady?" he asks, a little self-consciousness hiding even beneath his lascivious smile.

She traces his receding hairline, the soft silkiness of his hair, now more silvern than black. "I see beauty," she whispers, knowing how uneasy Jaffar has always felt about the sparseness of his hair, especially when Fadl, despite being a year older, has retained a full head of voluminous hair well into his fifties. "That first night, when you let me unravel your turban..." her eyes flicker back and forth. "I know now how uneasy you must have felt, then; how anxiously aware of your age. But I thought--" she swallows, and again traces the sharp peak of his hairline. " _This befits him,_ I thought," she laughs, laughs at the absurdity of what she had felt then. "I remember being startled, remember thinking I should perhaps have been disappointed, repulsed, and how surprised I felt when I did not feel any of those things. I swear upon my life that I only remember thinking that... that you could not look any other way! As if I had never expected you to look otherwise," she says and tucks a strand of his hair behind his ear. "Which brings me to what I have been meaning to ask you, in fact."

"Go on," Jaffar says, curious, his eyes glowing with gladness; even after all these years, his heart is filled with an aching awe at how unbelievable this woman is, the marvel of him having been blessed with a wife who thinks the way most women don't. He had expected his bride to be modest and polite towards him, of course, but to have nevertheless found him a sorry sight; yet Yassamin's reaction had been perfectly neutral, even in her virgin astonishment and her fear of the male animal.

But there is no fear in her eyes any longer, only curiosity. "Did you ever visit my dreams with your head uncovered?" she now asks. "When you were still but pretending to be a djinni?" A little frown deepens between her brows. "For that moment I beheld your head uncovered for the first time... my love, it was to me one of those moments when you suddenly remember having experienced that exact moment once already, as if you had already lived it in a dream."

"You never told me that!" he blinks. "But, no--I remember always having pulled a veil of sorts before myself to shield myself from your eyes, so as not to frighten you too much," he says, a little bashful, now. "But there might have been times I forgot--or underestimated your gifts of magical sight, my little witch!" he grins. "Who knows, perhaps I did watch you through my crystal in but my night-robe, once or twice."

She rolls her eyes. "And less than a robe, knowing you," she says and now nudges his towel with her thigh. "But it was strange..." she says, now lost in the memory of that night. "I don't know how to explain it, except by that which we already know: that we but recognised our other half the moment we saw each other." The way God splits souls in two before He sends them down to Earth to play, each half being drawn to the other and immediately recognising its missing half, no matter how long it may take for them to find each other.

"I must have known," he, too, now murmurs and kisses her hand. "Your beauty, however, proved an advantage when it came to discovering the attraction! I am still grateful that my flaws did not veil my true self from you, my love," he says with great warmth and now places her hand upon his heart. "Was there anything else?"

"This. The heart of a lion," she whispers and closes her eyes, trying not to cry; "that is what beats here." _The sheer nobility required of a man for him to choose love before power, piety above wealth--never, and I care not if I blaspheme, has there been a truer Caliph. You may not reign over millions any more, but you have more greatness in you than any Caliph before or since. For the kingdom of Love is far vaster than any caliphate; the counsel and friendship of God more valuable than that of the best of viziers or boon-companions._

But now it is Jaffar who laughs, wetly, with the salt of happy tears; he but rocks underneath her hand playfully. "Come, now, my sweet--let us not be so grave as to break down weeping! Come, jest about my ribs a little! Mock your husband the wife, the sodomite! Else we will turn this room into a pool of tears, and--well. Think of poor Zahra and the maids, them having to clean up the aftermath of a deluge!"

Yassamin opens her eyes and laughs, tickling Jaffar's ribs until he yelps; he counters with a tickle-assault of his own until they roll there upon the bed in a tussle of kisses, tears; soft and warm and perfumed skin upon skin.

Finally, she has him pinned down upon the bed with her full weight, both of them now heaving from laughter, breathless; she tosses her hair aside and lays her head upon his chest. "I am not yet finished, husband," she says, her eyes now warm and aglow like--

That gives him an idea. He extricates a hand and presses a finger to her lips. "I first, then you--we'll take turns." For he must say it now, lest he forget; she is indeed distracting him so marvellously with the heat of her body that he is now erect against the softness of her belly. "Your eyes, my sweet..." he murmurs, his own flickering back and forth. 

_He thinks to mock me for their crookedness,_ he can hear her thinking; but he will have none of that. Thus, with a gentle psychic press, as if that of a caressing hand upon her head, he submerges that thought into his vision, letting her see what he now thinks, feels. "The warmth of honey-wine," he murmurs, yet loud enough, firm enough, commanding enough to make it a declaration magical, a spell, a manifestation of his will made reality: "The way warmth, heat, fire is inherent in wine, my sweet; that is what your eyes are: warm within like wine. White wine, sparkling with your laughter, flickering merrily as it swirls into a silvern cup; the silvern cup your moon-face, shining bright from betwixt these dark clouds of fragrant night," he sighs and spreads out her hair, marvelling at her as he splays her locks wide between his hands. "A wine dyed a dark gold from cinnamon and honey, steeped and mulled so that it doubly warms the body and gladdens the heart upon even the coldestmost of nights; a golden glow radiating the perfumes of ambergris and musk." He laces his hands with hers and kisses each hand. "And from this light upon light I drink, night after night; God having so blessed me that I might already feel the joys of Paradise upon this earth, even if I thought I deserved them not: in this divine wine my soul reels and spins a dervish, my Babylonian."

She but shakes her head and kisses both his hands in turn, trying not to weep. "Again you mix words and concepts heathen and divine, my husband half-pagan," she laughs without malice; "but as always, I shall pray to God to forgive my fool of a husband for his sins. For my fool speaks in sincere love." 

"God is merciful," Jaffar sighs in great joy and delight, truly as drunk of her as he said he was, swooning there, relaxing his body into her hands to let her speak in turn.

She looks into his eyes and now takes his left hand in both of hers, lifting it to her lips. "Your hands," she murmurs. "Never have I beheld hands as beautiful; never have I known hands as dextrous and skilled. Whether you're writing letters, building your devices or playing with your children, I find myself lost in watching their movements, forever so elegant, making even the mundanestmost of tasks into a dance of great artistry." She traces the bones, the tendons, the thick and vinelike veins upon the back of his hand with her lips, making him tremble underneath her in sweet arousal; as she dips her tongue into the dip between the root of his thumb and the back of his wrist, he lets out a moan, his prick pulsing against her stomach.

"My lady!" he cries out, himself surprised at how her touch has undone him so, such a small lick at the back of his hand rendering him a man afire; afire as angels and djinn, he now blazes there in his delight.

She but smiles, as drunk of him as he is of her. "This dip," she sighs and now strokes it with her thumb. "Do you know I think it--nay, revere it!--as it the most erotic of places?"

"No," he laughs, astonished. What can he do to her with that dip that he cannot do to her with the skill of his fingers, the power of his wrist?

Having heard his thought, she lets go and slides off him to lie beside him, on his right. "Clasp your prick," she tells him, smiling.

He does, settling his hand comfortably around his erection, his fingers not too loose or too tight, testing the pleasure of his grip with a gentle stroke. "And now?" he asks, his voice a little higher.

"Keep on stroking. I will tell you when to stop."

He wonders about her, wonders why she has made him use his left hand in particular--slowness, he assumes, but it's not as if he is going to complain of her again indulging his love of slow play. 

Therefore, he makes a show of this pleasuring of himself for her, spreading his legs, too, in the way he knows she likes him to. Slowly, he picks up the fire she has lit in him and now uses it to heat up his entire body with the friction of his hand, intoxicates himself further with the perfumes of the oils he'd used upon his skin now becoming stronger and more alive with his body's heat. 

But now, hotter than even this angel-fire, is his beloved's blazing demoness gaze; stronger than the musk and the ambergris the sweet scent of his wanton jasmine, now wet between her legs. As she gazes at him with slow hunger, her mouth waters; the flutter of her cunny so palpable to him that his hand automatically mimics it about his prick, gifting to himself the imitation of her cunny's pulsing around it, just as she now imagines being filled with his prick in turn.

"And now?" he croaks, his desire so hard and so high his entire body pulses with hers; his prick trickles with each one of her flutters, a thick rivulet of sap flowing down his shaft. 

"That's exactly it," she rasps, her own voice now hoarse from her heat, her own clitoris hard and thick between her fingertips. "Keep your hand there--stroke it--" she moans and bites her lip, moving closer to see.

And it is then that he gleans her meaning: she strokes herself, her womb lifting, her cunny clenching so violently that now a drop of sap thicker than all the rest is pursed out of his prick. Down, down it glides, slips, slides--and finally, pools between the tendons between the back of the root of his thumb and his wrist. 

"That's it, husband," she cries, her breath hot and wet against the back of his hand; _it is that exact dip where sap gathers, sperm, my spray when you take me with your fingers; the Cup of Pleasure Itself, I think it--oh--my sweet--_

And now it is she who moans as she licks up that sap from that little cup above his wrist, pulling a fat string of it out with her tongue; she smacks it into her mouth and begins to heave, tremble, roll with first waves of orgasm billowing out of her hips.

"Oh, no, you don't," he laughs and pulls her astride his cock, sucking her hand into his mouth, adoring her screams as he bites into her hand, laving and sucking her sweetness from it: the sweetest of all tremors for him being these, when all of her trembles and spasms hot and tight around his prick. 

He spits out her hand and slaps his hands onto her buttocks, rolling his hips into her with hard and vigorous intent; oh, but he loves it when she takes revenge upon him for his violence by pulling upon his hair with her bitten hand, kissing him violently in turn, biting his tongue until it's his turn to scream. 

Thus, she who is his wine drinks from him the wine of his pain-moans, pleasure-cries; with her cunny she milks his cock, sending to him her adoration of his sweet slickness now mixing with hers, foaming as she rides him in the wildest, hardest of animal copulations, no finesse to it, but all the sweeter for its impulsivity and intensity. Oh, but she submerges him in the honey-wine that she has now become entirely, she the one whirling mad with ecstasy now that she knows she no longer has to fear pregnancy: as always, she had performed the womb-sealing spell the moment they had entered this bedchamber together.

Never has she been as openly greedy for his sap and his sperm as she is now, knowing it can no longer do her harm; with vigorous drags of her cunny's muscles and rolls of her hips, she draws his sap into her body as if a tree drinking moisture from the earth. And gladly, he gives it to her, gives himself unto her entire: forever the wellspring to his jasmine does he give to her his existence--for what does water exist for, if not to nurture life, to slake a thirst, to make all things grow? For does she not always say that it is _he_ who is to her the mother, his love the amniotic fluid to her soul--but a babe growing within the shelter of his loving flesh--

"Enough!" she but laughs and shakes her head atop him, now gesturing for him to take her lying down: "Enough of mother talk. I would you took me like a man; oh--hurry--"

And as she brings her hand to her clitoris once more, he lets go and returns to that state of pure animal rut, a pure flowing into her, crashing into her a waterfall. Sharp, precise, he pounds into her exactly between her own convulsions, letting them rise and rise before hitting her womb so as to let each ripple peak ever higher: soon, she is unravelling around him, her hair a wet black cloud about her head, her face entirely flushed and red as she tosses there in her release. 

This is the simplest, sweetest of short and hard and fast bedtime fucks, the animal in him cackles, he now the one pouring out a stream of expletives as she continues to milk his prick, claiming his orgasm for herself, tearing it from his body just as he always swallows hers into his. Gladly, gladly he yields himself unto her, devoured into the maddening squeeze of her sex, swallowed into the great cunny of Nature Herself, giving up his seed into her, she the ground of his being. There, he belongs, falling forever and ever into the honey-sweet, hot and wet darkness that is she, he bursting into star-white bloom within her flesh: he flowering white inside of her, the wellspring become the jasmine himself.

And it is within this oneness that they drift suspended, light and heavy and sweet, until the sound of gentle evening rain upon the windows stirs them awake.

Jaffar is loath to roll off her, but he must: he has to secure the window shutters against a possible storm, August as it is. The elements care not for the embraces of lovers, and he would not be struck down by lightning yet, while there is still life and desire left in him for further embraces. Therefore, wet and sticky, he staggers to the windows to close their heavy wooden doors, casting a rune over each latch just to make sure the bedchamber will indeed be deluge-proofed.

It is then that he jumps, yelps, screams: Yassamin, grinning at him from the bed, has again performed for him a full cleansing-spell, rinsing his genitals vigorously with a magical flame, inside and out. 

"For crying out loud, woman!" he yells and makes for the nearest washbowl, ready to throw its contents at her in revenge--

But that would mean getting his own bed wet, so he decides to take his revenge by casting the same spell over her instead: soon, she, too, is yelping and kicking and squirming as the flames flicker within her cunny and without it. And as he climbs into bed beside her, he decides to add to this playful punishment of his a dozen hard blows of his hands over her buttocks, until she finally screams and begs for him to stop.

"Mercy!" she cries, struggling free from his grasp, throwing him his nightshirt as she grabs hers.

"Yes," he nods as they dress and he delivers one more smack to her arse before it disappears underneath her nightgown and the blanket. "You're just saying that because had I given you more, your little cunny would have heated up so much you would've demanded of me another fuck."

"Correct," she stretches and yawns, gathering him close as he slips underneath the blanket. "I cried 'mercy' for but the sake of my old and weary husband," she grins.

He ignores her barb and kisses her upon the nose. "Sleep, and I might just spank you properly tomorrow."

"And how am I supposed to sleep imagining _that?!_ " she cries in exasperation and rolls her eyes; he can feel her cunny's fluttering even now.

"Then dream of it, and share the dream with me," he but chuckles and gathers her into his arms. "God's peace and blessings upon thee, my unruly child," he murmurs into her curls of jasmine.

"God's peace and blessings upon thee, my giant child of a husband," she whispers into his skin of musk and rose and ambergris.


	2. Chapter 2

There are times for Yassamin when strange desires, perversions grow rapidly inside of her being, like explosively proliferating plants bourgeoning, crawling, swelling upon the surface of her self: the strangest of living, breathing things gathering amorphous masses upon her soul until they become too great for her to bear.

This is something that has only started to happen now, during the past few years, when Jaffar's age and the presence of their children have started to limit the time and the energy they used to have for their erotic explorations: before, she and Jaffar would have found out the names and natures of these things as soon as they had started to spring from her soil. Why, early on in their marriage, it would have been _Jaffar_ who would have first recognised all these new plants now rising from her depths, by the shapes of their shoots alone--if it hadn't been he who'd planted them there in the first place!

But now... he is simply too busy with his work, too content with his life to notice any of the subtler changes in Yassamin, and while neither she or he are unhappy--well. He does not mean to neglect her, and would be devastated to find out that this was how she felt about it: therefore, she does not divulge these things to him, especially as she only feels this dramatically about it on her worst days in any case, knowing her sense of loneliness for but an exaggeration, a distortion brought on by foul humours.

And thus, thanks to her own shame, she keeps quiet about her hurt, deeming it selfishness, locking it up so deep inside of herself that Jaffar cannot find it even in their--now, often light--moments of psychic union.

Yet, again there come times when this angers her, enrages her--that despite their psychic connection, it might take Jaffar days, weeks to even sense such a mass building within her, if he indeed notices it at all. Oh, how swiftly he would have inspected these desires before, going in like a surgeon or a gardener, excising from her--as he had done with her depressions--any excess foul humours. Or, as with her Sapphic desires, declaring these growths indeed herbs magical, and extracting from them the most intoxicating of elixirs!

Yet, she wants to be found out, exposed. She wants to be laid bare, explored and healed, the way he always used to do with her, without her having to ask for it specifically. And it is exactly this, the fact that she now feels she has to _ask,_ to prompt, to plead for something that had previously come to them naturally, that sets her bubbling with even more poisonous frustration.

Yet, stubbornly, she does not ask, and he remains oblivious, and so do they pass their days.

And it is during those days that she feels angry and guilty at _herself_ for feeling so dependent on his judgement on these things: is she not a learned woman, a wise witch? She is no longer Yassamin the virgin or the young wife, with her head full of knowledge gained only from books, but a sage-woman, a sorceress in her own right! Why would _she_ need _his_ intervention to solve her troubles? And as far as desire and passion are concerned--well. Have there not indeed been several occasions in her life when she could have, with her libertinism, put even Messalina to shame?

Therefore, should it not follow on from that that she, Yassamin of Basra, should take it upon herself to _herself_ study what it was that ailed her, to seek its cure independently of her husband, especially if he would rather rot in the shabestan with his dolls in the first place? _Physician, heal thyself!_ she now groans to herself within her heart. 

And upon the heels of that thought, always, always the most horrid of evil spirits whispering in her ear: _He is not going to be here forever, after all._

And it is upon her worst days, those terrible days just before her monthly flow, that this thought is enough to send her breaking down in floods of tears.

It is thus, in a heap of broken porcelain and with her bloodied hands held up to her weeping face that Zahra, one day, finds her mistress.

"But, my lady!" Zahra cries, rushing in through the kitchen door to tend to Yassamin's hands, immediately producing a bottle of cleansing tincture and cotton wool from the pockets of her voluminous apron. Just as she tends to the cuts and scrapes of the children more swiftly and more skillfully than Yassamin herself does, Yassamin thinks, so vulnerable to self-pity, now, that even _that_ old exaggerated shame now raises its head inside of her, one of a veritable Hydra of shames. 

And it is now, in the stormy sea of her melancholic madness, that each one of those heads is hissing at her and spitting at her, each one dripping its acidic poisons onto her heart.

"No, madam; that'd be the spirits in the tincture," Zahra says, looking straight into Yassamin's heart the way she always does, having learned to know her so well during these past eleven years: she need not be telepathic to have heard Yassamin's thoughts, the way Yassamin is now projecting them far and wide. 

Zahra but shakes her head at the connection Yassamin has now made with the ugly, brown and green syrup now staining her hands, and the stains Yassamin herself has been smearing upon her heart. "Lift your palms up in the air and let it dry, just like that, fingers open," she says to Yassamin in a voice that is brisk and will not take any nonsense, exactly in the way she needs to be talked to right now, the miserable child she is.

"I am sorry about the bowl, Zahra," Yassamin sniffles. "I am so clumsy whenever I near my moon-days, such a butterfingers; I should never even be let into the kitchen in the first place!" she mumbles, another pair of those Hydra heads of hers always having been her physical clumsiness and unskilledness at cooking. 

For a princess, her mother had always scolded her, should ever be the paragon of gracefulness--and on top of that, also a dazzling hostess, able to impress her noble guests with at least a dozen unique, complex and flavourful recipes they'd talk about for years afterwards. 

And here she is, married to the son of not one, but two culinary geniuses--Jaffar's parents having written cookbooks during their heyday at Harun's court--and yet Yassamin herself is such a terrible cook she could manage to burn even a sorbet; of that, she is certain.

"It was only a matter of time," Zahra says as she tidies up the thin, sharp pieces of porcelain, shooing Mustafa aside before he can cut his paws on the shards. "It's the one we made bets on, remember? Of how soon it'd break?" she says and nudges Yassamin's shoulder, easily wrangling a dustpan, a cat and a self-pitying former queen all at the same time--taking everything in her stride, as always.

And Zahra is, indeed, right: when they had been living in Baghdad, the dish had rarely been used exactly because it had been so thin you could almost see through it, and everyone had been afraid of breaking it.

However, it _had_ been one of Jaffar's wedding gifts to her, a priceless antique. "He's going to kill me."

"No, he won't. He always said it was too ugly to use at the table, and too fragile for his experiments. Good riddance, I say. We need a few sturdier ones in its place in any case. Particularly as he never returns the ones he takes down to the shabestan," Zahra grumbles. Jaffar hardly ever lets the servants visit the shabestan, let alone clean it, lest they disturb his projects or break his instruments, he says; the pots and bowls and jugs _have_ indeed been piling up on the work tables.

"I'd wish he'd return _himself_ from the shabestan," Yassamin mutters. "How many days it is now? Three?"

"Four, by my reckoning. Today, he refused even food; he told Sonbol he was fasting, to better focus his mind."

"Fasting!" Yassamin rolls her eyes. "As if he could afford to lose any more weight!" 

"You can lower your hands now, madam."

Yassamin looks at her hands: the tincture, one of Jaffar's magical ones, has indeed done its work and her skin has healed perfectly. However, some sticky residue still lingers between her fingers. She makes to get up to wash her hands, but as it is not an easy task without using one's hands, Zahra has to help her. 

And even as Yassamin washes her hands underneath the tap--every part of this house bearing the marks of Jaffar's genius, his craftsmanship--Zahra still holds her from behind, letting Yassamin relax her body into her embrace. Yassamin sighs, with deep anguish from the bottom of her heart; she but hangs there, clutching the coarse linen towel as she dries her hands absent-mindedly.

"I need not ask it to know it is the master you are thinking of, my lady," Zahra prompts, still hugging Yassamin from behind, leaving--as always--open the choice for Yassamin to not speak, should she not wish to do so.

But she does feel like speaking. "Indeed, it is him. I--Zahra--" and now, tears threaten to steal her words from her once more. She stands there in the circle of Zahra's arms, the softness of Zahra's body so different from the firmness, thinness of Jaffar's; Yassamin lifts her hands to her face to drown yet another hopeless sob.

"That's enough," Zahra says and spins Yassamin around in her arms, taking off her apron and tossing it aside. "You and I, my room, wine."

"But--" it is afternoon, still; far too early for them to retreat. "But what about the children? And dinner--"

"SonBOL!" Zahra cries out of the kitchen window, in a voice that could shake Mount Zamavand if she wished for it to do so. Already she is dragging Yassamin by the arm to the harem, a basket full of wine and cakes under her other arm. "Tell him it's an emergency!" Zahra shoots over her shoulder to the maids as she passes their quarters. "You take care of dinner and the little ones; the mistress is in urgent need of my attention."

"What kind of attention?" one of the girls or eunuchs--it's hard to tell, what with the speed with which Zahra is dragging Yassamin along the corridor--can only just be heard asking. For it is Jaffar who, in this household, has usually been the one tending to everyone's needs, whether they be medical or spiritual.

Unceremoniously, Zahra shoves Yassamin into her room. "I am going to get the mistress drunk!"

***

Yassamin has rarely visited Zahra's room, but it's as calm and as refined as she had remembered it to be: unlike Yassamin herself, Zahra has always preferred to be surrounded by muted colours, the seats and the bed and the walls all being covered by rugs and blankets woven in dark reds and browns. These form a stark contrast between Zahra's brightly coloured clothes: like a queen, she stands out within her surroundings with her turbans of scarlet and orange and blue, always changing her plain work clothes into those of brighter hues once the day's work is done. Whereas Yassamin prefers gentle pinks and light blues in her clothing, draping her rooms with strong blood-reds and sapphires and greens, Zahra is her exact opposite: often Yassamin has felt bloodless in comparison, a woman paler not only in her skin's hue, but also more wan and pale in spirit. Even now, as they sit upon Zahra's cushions, Yassamin feels pale and washed-out in her pink dress, sitting as she does next to Zahra, whose velvet jacket and over-skirt are as deep and rich a red as the wine she now pours them, her blouse and shalwars of ivory silk but making their red glow ever brighter. 

At first, Yassamin feels embarrassed at Zahra making such an effort to cheer her up, the way she now plies Yassamin with wine and ribald jokes; however, within a few hours Yassamin is so drunk and so merry she no longer cares, now regaling Zahra with ribald tales of her own. Even in her drunkenness, she is amazed at how Zahra is not as shocked or as surprised as Yassamin thought she might be, even as Yassamin describes to her some of Zainab's wilder parties and what she and her girls got up to during them. But then again, Zahra must know more about Jaffar and Yassamin's adventures than she has ever let on, and Yassamin is but confirming things she already knows.

"How much _do_ you know, then?" Yassamin slurs and leans against Zahra's arm, nearly toppling the checkers they've been playing off the table.

Zahra steadies the little table. "Enough to know what kinds of toys he builds in the cellar," she answers diplomatically; she has not been foolish enough to get as drunk as Yassamin, having diluted her wine considerably with water, whereas Yassamin suspects she has been crumbling hashish into Yassamin's own--that would explain the weariness and the fits of giggles both. "But as for whatever I've glimpsed of your relations... I doubt you would want me to describe the details, madam. Surely you cannot have expected Sonbol and I to be innocent?"

It is true. After the marital aids Jaffar and Yassamin had gifted Zahra and Sonbol with, who does Yassamin think she is fooling? Not Zahra, the way she has benefited from Jaffar's perversion herself; by God, this woman has never been taken by anything _except_ magical toy pricks!

"I am a fool," Yassamin mumbles into her wine. "I suppose... I suppose you would have but turned a blind eye," she says and sips from her bowl.

"I do," Zahra grins. "One has to turn it into an art in this household."

"But that's why we love you," Yassamin says and nuzzles Zahra's shoulder.

"Come, mistress. Now that you know that I know, you can tell me. Is it the dolls you are jealous of?"

To be fair, such a thought had never even crossed Yassamin's mind. Why, it'd be utterly ludicrous to even contemplate such: that Jaffar would've fallen in love with Sarosh, or crafted himself a silver maiden so beautiful and so perfect he would have abandoned Yassamin for their embraces... "No, no;" Yassamin now laughs, relieved. "The very idea is absurd. No, Zahra: he cannot stop telling me how much he loves me, always comparing me to other things he finds loveable, and finding them wanting." She pauses, swirling the wine in her cup, her voice now lowering into a quiet, grateful whisper. "And I am glad, Zahra. Glad. There is no such thing as jealousy between us; why, whenever we have been playing with others, it has but strengthened the bond between us, shown to us more clearly what we so love about each other. He is the other half of my soul, as I am the other half of his; but the same heart beating in two breasts." 

"Is it merely the time he spends in the shabestan, then?"

"I suppose," Yassamin says, now feeling awkward about telling Zahra the truth: she does not expect Zahra to know about _all_ their practices, the deeper and darker ones--why, one would have had to be in telepathic contact with them to experience the sorts of explorations she now feels deprived of. "It is not that he does not make love to me, Zahra--it is only that he used to love me longer, deeper, through love-plays that lasted for hours, days. But those games are exhausting for both of us--I found them exhausting even as a young woman; I find them even more exhausting now that we have a family to look after. And if I am worn out by those games at thirty-two, imagine what they must do to the constitution of a man of fifty-eight! Thus, you see, I feel too guilty to say anything about missing those plays."

Zahra frowns a little. "Yet it is not as if the dolls do not require of him a lot of standing, moving and thinking;" she murmurs, and now rises from her seat to better think upon her feet; "he might even be using the dolls as an excuse to stay down in the shabestan while he is, in fact, doing something else. Or it could be that he is _himself_ feeling guilty for something--his age, his waning virility weighing heavily upon his mind, perhaps; who knows?" 

The sun is about to set and thus, Zahra sets out to light lanterns in the room; ever pious, she whispers a little apology to God for deciding to forego sunset prayers, now that she has Yassamin to tend to. "But it would be foolish of me to suspect he did not have the means through which to work around impotence. So it cannot be that, either."

"It cannot be that," Yassamin says and empties her bowl. "No, I doubt he is hiding from me deliberately. I really do think it is only that he has become more and more absent-minded with age, and simply gets lost in his work--and thus neglects his wife and his children. I suppose I thought my husband would not be one of those men," she sighs. 

Zahra clears the checkers off the table, both women now having lost interest in the game. "It could be that we worry for nothing. He might, in fact, be building you something special this very moment."

Yassamin raises her eyebrow as she reaches to refill her bowl. "I would probably know by now. If only from the way he walked; he has a habit of testing all his toys on himself first!"

Zahra bursts into laughter. "I know that walk!" she says as she pours more water into her wine. "But, my lady, I sense that even if we were to succeed at luring him out of his cellar, even that would not be enough. There has to be something more, and I can see it in your eyes. Why, you could tell him to come out now, and he would be on his knees before you, begging for your forgiveness. Why don't you ask him?"

Yassamin stares out of the window, at the birds flying past the orange clouds; suddenly, she feels very old, as if those birds were her life flying past, and that this sunset were a portent of doom, a herald of the autumn years of their marriage being upon them.

She hates this thought, and with a violent shudder, pushes it aside.

"I wish I knew the answer to that myself," she whispers after a long pause. "Is it only that he and I have both become fools as we age, Zahra?" she asks, tears now filling her eyes. "That we have become just like ordinary couples; the ones who but sulk or quarrel?"

Zahra nods. "Perhaps you should give the master a taste of his own medicine. Turn him from your bed, and see how _he_ likes being abandoned; make him long for you as much as you now long for him."

"Must I?" Yassamin cries in exasperation and raises her eyes heavenwards. "Zahra, this is _exactly_ what I mean--these are the things ordinary women would do! The petty and vain and cruel games they play; you know how much I hate them. The stupidity of ordinary women, ever waging their little wars against their men, or each other." 

That, indeed, had been one of the reasons Yassamin had been glad to give up the Great Harem at Baghdad: even there, she had preferred the company of her own, small, private court comprised only of Zahra and a select few other women. No, no: not for Yassamin the constant backstabbings and poisonings of courtiers' and viziers' wives, amira and slave girl alike ruthlessly fighting their way up in the harem's ranks for their positions as powerful men's favourites. Nor for her the cruel games of the likes of Halima, the women who cared not for men but predated upon other women instead, breaking hearts and bodies whenever they got tired of their conquests.

No, no; Yassamin has always been--despite her flights of fancy and romantic dreams--a woman of reason when it comes to serious matters. One of the reasons she and Jaffar have always got along so well and have always loved each other so deeply has been because they are both creatures of reason, disinclined to petty arguments; always, always has their relationship been driven by a streak of deep wisdom and careful consideration even behind their wildest games. 

Indeed, it had been Jaffar himself who had taught her that one _could_ indeed indulge one's romantic fancies and high-flying dreams without dangerous consequences, if one but maintained a strong foundation of logic and reason and discrimination beneath one's actions. The same way a healthy and well-exercised body helps maintain a healthy mind, the same way a magician must know his ritual structures by heart, control his body through various physical techniques so that he might channel magical powers without burning himself in the process.

" _'Two wings upon the same bird there are/that carry it to Heaven,'_ he'd said and clasped my hand," Yassamin now whispers: " _'Love and Reason combined.'_ Only now, his logic and his science have robbed him from me," she sighs and drinks deeply from her wine. "Always, always would he speak of our love as the thing that kept him anchored to this world; that it was his desire for me that kept him from drifting into complete hermitude with his books and his machines; but now, Zahra, he is slipping away from me. What have I done? What--" exasperated, she empties her bowl, too upset to do anything else.

"Mistress, when I suggested you give him a taste of his own medicine... I meant it in the sense of shaking him up, making him realise the situation the two of you were in. I doubt there is any risk of it ever turning into a pattern with you two. But simply reminding him of the pattern itself might awaken him, the same way an early symptom warns one of an oncoming illness. He is intelligent enough to know a mirror when one is held up to his face, is he not? Therefore, I expect he would drop everything and regain his self-understanding immediately, after he realised you were both in danger of becoming that which you both so loathed: ordinary people."

Yassamin falls back upon her cushions with a great groan, letting her empty cup fall from her hand. It is a tempting thought: it might even play into Jaffar's obsessive--at times obnoxious!--love of delayed gratification.

Already she sees herself feeling more and more powerful the more she denies him, proud as she walks the halls of her house with her head held high, basking in the blaze of the fire in his eyes as it grows and grows; already she imagines the passion he would ravish her with the moment she let him back into her bedchamber. Perhaps he would even take her in the middle of the courtyard--

But that, again, brushes too close to those desires she finds it difficult to even think of telling him about, and she clenches her hands into fists. But she and Jaffar simply cannot go on like this: perhaps a slow wait, and an explosion--whether it be an argument or a ravishment--is what she needs to be able to let go, to communicate with him again. Perhaps then, she would understand herself, once his passion had burned away the clouds of cowardice and ignorance that now veil her heart.

But even the thought of denying him as soon as he comes out of the shabestan, truly denying him without explanation--and not as a part of a game they'd agreed to beforehand--strikes her as needlessly cruel. Why, the very thought of seeing her Jaffar shocked, sad, heartbroken and miserable, imagining the hurt look upon his face, is too much for her to bear. He has been abandoned so many times in his life, robbed of the very things that had given him life; already has he had his loved ones taken away from him by murder and deceit. Who, then, knows what sort of monster Yassamin could unleash, were she to stick a knife into his greatest wound?

"No, Zahra. I cannot do it. I simply cannot!" she now cries, bursting into tears of terror and grief; she weeps so violently that she has to sit up to be able to even drag in breaths, Zahra unable to calm her even with her warm and gentle hand upon Yassamin's back. On and on she weeps, weeps from the bottom of her loneliness, not even knowing _why_ it is that this little absence of his has made her hurt so much. She is so stupid, such a foolish creature--and to think that she had even entertained the thought of hurting him! 

"Zahra, Zahra," she moans, her voice thick from phlegm; "He does not deserve it, and even if he did, I would never be able to forgive myself. Why, were he here, I would take the whip to him this very instant! But I--" still, she rocks there, groaning against Zahra's shoulder, "I would break down in tears after the first stroke!"

"Pity," Jaffar now says from the doorway; however, his joke falls crushed from his lips like a broken toy from a child's hand. 

Ashen, he stands there, having forced himself through the door by means magical, it seems; he is still wearing his leather apron, and there are dark stains of engine-grease upon his face and his trembling, twitching fingers. It is clear that Yassamin's pain must have summoned him here, the moment it had become so acute it had penetrated into his consciousness all the way down in the shabestan. 

Zahra looks at Jaffar, mortified to see him standing there in her bedroom; as familiar as Jaffar is with his servants, he has always respected common harem etiquette and has never visited the rooms of Zahra or the other maids, them not being his relatives nor his slaves.

But Jaffar, still not quite knowing what to say, only looks around himself to buy himself time, taking in the calm and beautiful surroundings; wistfully, he observes the warmth of the rugs and the lanterns he had himself built, the last rays of the sunset glittering through his damp eyes. Strands of his hair have escaped his ponytail, pointing this way and that; now, he slowly gathers his fingers into fists, so as to keep them from trembling, it seems.

"It is a tasteful room you have here, Zahra," he says, quietly, still not moving from his spot; he stands there as helpless, as powerless before the women as a youth talking to a pair of queens. 

He is so terrible to look at that Yassamin cannot bear it: at first, she buries her face into Zahra's shoulder once more, into the warmth of her velvet jacket. 

But now it is Zahra who, emboldened by the wine, speaks her mind. "Enough!" she says, the exact tone she uses when shaking Salsabil and Anwar out of their fits; "Enough of this game. What are you to each other?" she asks Yassamin as she forces her to sit up, to face Jaffar.

"A wife," Yassamin says, her eyes so misted from tears she can barely see Jaffar, and it's just as well, for the sadness roiling off him makes her blood run cold.

"A husband," he now croaks in turn, and it is hard to say whether his face is irritated from the farcicality of all this, or whether he is weary at himself.

"And what vows did you swear to each other?" Zahra continues, relentless, looking from husband to wife. "Come, now--"

"To always tell each other _the truth,_ " Jaffar interrupts, now taking charge of the situation, staring at both women with intent, as if to remind them of who the master of this household was.

"To always support each other," Yassamin now replies, but it is not an accusation, although from any other woman, it might have sounded like one: if anything, she is now in such a state of shock that it sounds more like a question, laced with a terror of Jaffar perhaps having grown tired of her sorrows.

It is then that Jaffar cannot bear it any longer: he lets out a cry, a soft, broken, womanly cry and springs into movement. "Yassamin!" he moans, genuinely hurt that she should ever even worry about such a thing, a deep frown furrowing his forehead as he rushes beside Yassamin, cradling her against his chest. "Whatever is the matter, my sweet?" he whispers into her hair, rocking her in his arms, looking from her to Zahra; "What have I done?" he asks, genuinely astonished. "Was it the bowl?"

"No!" Yassamin groans with exasperation. 

"It is only that she loves you so much that she cannot bear to be parted from you, master," Zahra says, saying it like it is so that Yassamin doesn't have to, Zahra now the one scolding him and ready to take upon herself the results of that scolding, for better or for worse. "That is what I gathered from it, master. Four days is a long time for a woman in love; an eternity for a woman weighed down by moon-humours."

"That explains it," Jaffar sighs in relief, glancing at the ceiling, his eyes wet from tears; he sniffs them back a little. "In a few days, you'll be yourself aga--"

"Don't you dare!" Yassamin cries, now shooting up her head, looking from Jaffar to Zahra and back to Jaffar again. "Don't you dare blame but me and my humours! I would be sick no matter what time of the month it was," she mumbles, casting down her eyes. "And I hate myself for having said that."

But it is then that Jaffar picks up her chin and looks into her eyes. "Because you hate loving me to the point of pain, or hate how much it hurts me to hear the truth--to realise what a bad husband I have been? Because I do not blame you for being angry with me, my love. I have behaved like an ass;" he says and grits his teeth. "This doll required an entirely new array of functions, and I had to engineer them from scratch, calculate all the--" but now he groans, rolls his eyes and drops his hand. "Oh, I have no excuse. I got carried away and that's that.

"Who _is_ that doll going to have to satisfy?!" Yassamin laughs wetly. "An entire company of men?"

"That's just it. I don't know yet," Jaffar mumbles, he now the one staring into his own lap. "I thought I would build it first, to see what I was capable of, and then advertise. And in my ambition, I wanted to make it better, more skilled than any of my previous creations: a doll that could satisfy everyone. Man, woman, eunuch; the ladies' man, the cunny-suckstress and the sodomite. Now, _that_ would be the kind of doll whose proceeds we could _really_ retire on."

"You _have_ gone mad from ambition in your old age," Yassamin sighs.

"Not so!" he huffs. "You have both seen wish-fulfilling crystals, yes? Those rare and precious gems that will look into your soul and give you your heart's desire?"

"In fairytales," Zahra sighs, but she knows better than to truly defy Jaffar, especially as Yassamin now remains quiet, in acknowledgement of magics very real and very powerful indeed.

"Well, that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to find one of those crystals, you see, and use it--" he gestures excitedly as he explains to Zahra, "Each one of our dolls takes its life from a crystal matrix, you see. But these are ordinary crystals."

Yassamin turns to Zahra. " _He_ calls them 'ordinary,' but they have life in them. There rest within certain gems flames," she says and cups her hands together, "trapped within them as light and heat, a great source of energy but waiting to be tapped. And that energy, we channel into our creatures, so that they have more power at their disposal than what mere clockwork or steam would afford. So when we say the gems give them life, we mean it in the same way the sun gives life to living creatures with its light and its heat."

Zahra mutters a prayer under her breath, but Jaffar is so used to being accused of playing God by now that he but continues, now slipping fully into his lecturing engineer mode.

"So. These desire-crystals. You have seen how versatile my plant gums have been, yes? Therefore, I wanted to build a new kind of doll around one of these wish-fulfilling crystals, not out of living silver but from these malleable, plastic, flowing materials--so that whatever the owner desired, _that_ would be what the doll would transform into. Often, these crystals die out after three wishes, because they simply burn themselves out: the transformation of matter demands _enormous_ energy expenditure. But if I helped the process somewhat with easily transforming materials, and found additional ways of fuelling the crystal--well. In theory, you could keep such a thing going on for ever; always capable of transforming into a new shape according to its master's will."

Zahra nods. "You _are_ mad," she says. 

Jaffar frowns and looks at Yassamin. "Why, I thought you would be pleased! Have you never wanted to have one of those gems, to attain your heart's desire?"

Yassamin but laughs nervously, a broken laugh. "Jaffar, I am terrified! Do you truly not see how _awful_ such a doll could be? Just think of all the terrible things men keep locked up in their hearts, the beasts that roam therein! And now, you would give such men a chance to make them flesh and blood, to send them rampaging free?"

"I was thinking of but pleasure, actually," he mumbles, now fidgeting with his apron. "A man like _Fadl_ would, after having sated his lusts with it, want to turn it into an invincible warrior, I'm sure; in that sense, you are correct. We would just have to choose carefully whom we would sell such a toy to."

"A toy, he calls it, when it could wreak empires!" Zahra now says, equally horrified. "If only men thought of love before war, then it would be no matter; if such a creature were only used to sate the desires of the flesh. Do not sell it to a man, whatever you do, rather a woman!" she cries, but then frowns immediately after. "Although, having said that, I can think of women who would use it as a killing machine, too," she says, despairing. "Humankind is a ship of fools, fools sailing in the dark."

Jaffar but sighs. "I have not found such a crystal yet, if you must know; as for now, but a shell for the doll exists, and even that is incomplete. But now that you have declared my new child a warrior and not a lover--even before its birth!--my first thought would be to offer the doll to Dunya, to make sure she remains on the throne as long as she lives. So, something good might come out of it after all."

"Unless the Byzantines capture it," Yassamin points out.

"I hate you," Jaffar mutters. "Come, how much wine have you had?" he says and looks around. "I have to make sure I catch up with you," he says as he holds out a bowl for Zahra to pour wine into. "So that I might arrive at the same stage of wisdom as you two," he grumbles, but without true malice: he knows everything the women have said for the truth. 

Zahra looks at Jaffar, then at Yassamin, who now looks very tired from the wine, from her grief. "I suggest only one bowlful, master;" Zahra says, "the mistress looks as if she is about to fall asleep."

" _And if some of us should drink so much/that they should fall asleep/why, then, we shall fuck them!_ " Jaffar quips, and raises a toast. 

It is at that Nuwas quote that Yassamin lets out an utterly exasperated sigh, gets to her feet and stumbles towards the privy.

Astounded and genuinely hurt, Jaffar turns to Zahra: again, his voice becomes soft and fragile, the proud Promethean scientist gone, only the concerned husband remaining in his place. "Is that how angry she is with me?" he says, his voice but a soft meaow. "I have never seen her like this," he murmurs and swirls his wine in its cup, not drinking from it yet.

"Neither have I," Zahra says as she mixes water into Jaffar's wine, too. "Methinks it is something more than just your absence, master: she hinted of some dark dreams she had had, some strange desires unfulfilled," she says. "She was deeply ashamed of herself, more so than usual; I was trying to get her to elaborate, but then you arrived."

"Desires unfulfilled," Jaffar says, staring into his cup, then drinking from it deeply; "I do not like this, Zahra. I do not like it at all. If my thought of love-dolls but instantly makes her think of war machines, what does she now think of love in general? I thought of but soft cunnies and hard pricks, but from her mind, I could feel the touch of cold claws and teeth," he whispers.

But it is then that Yassamin returns, walking awkwardly and holding her belly, crouching a little before she lowers herself onto the cushions. 

Jaffar's nostrils flare. "I see the moon-flow has arrived." For no matter how well she washes her hands, he can always tell what state she's in by her scent, his magic having gifted him with a sense of smell now more acute and more sharp than that of most human beings. And it is not merely her blood or her arousal that he can smell: by now, he knows her body's scents well enough to know what time of the month she is in, what she has been eating; how well she has slept, even.

"You are disgusting," Yassamin groans. "It is a private matter, not fit to be discussed in company."

"We are all friends here, and we your nurses, physicians," Jaffar reminds her, resting his hand on her belly. "Come to bed, and I will bugger the bad humours out of you," he says with a grin. "Hasten them on their way."

It is at that that Yassamin buries her face in his lap and moans. "I would love for you to, but the pain is always so much worse after; you know that. And I couldn't possibly take opium for it, now, not on top of this much wine," she sighs. "I'm sorry."

"My poorly queen," he sighs and takes her hand, kissing it before he empties his cup and sets it down on the table. "Thank you for your hospitality, Zahra," he says and bows to her. "I think I had best take her to bed."

"All right," Zahra says as she and Jaffar get up. "But you _must_ talk to him," she says to Yassamin sternly as she helps her stand up. "Or I swear to God, I will lock the bedroom door and not let you out until you have settled your quarrel!"

"There is no quarrel," Jaffar says, and in a mood to prove his love and his care, he lifts Yassamin into his arms. "Good night, Zahra!" 

"You'll break your back," Yassamin mutters against his shoulder as he begins to carry her to their love-chamber.

"My back is fine. And even if it wasn't, I'd still be there to take the opium with you tomorrow morning."

"I'm sorry for all this," Yassamin mumbles as Jaffar makes it through the door and carries her to bed.

"Now, no more of that," he says and locks the door, tenderly casting cleansing-spells over them both. 

And now, Jaffar takes it upon himself to serve as Yassamin's maid in Zahra's stead: he braids her hair for bed, then rubs her belly and her hips with rosemary and camphor to ease her aches and pains. Like a little doll herself, she allows herself to be so handled, held, too tired to even weep at the grace of having such a patient husband, so forgiving of her brattishness. 

Later, they read their prayers while lying down in bed, as sick people are allowed to do, and all the while he gazes upon her with the utmost care and gentleness, a curiosity and a concern for her well-being. So much does it sting her heart that by the end of the prayers, she hugs him, clings to him, sobbing dryly without tears; he but holds her, knowing she needs this, needs this exorcism to again move closer to him, to trust him fully. 

"Shh, shh," he says and kisses her on the nose, on the eyelids, on the mouth, lacing her fingers with his. "Tell me that you trust me, my sweet," he whispers. "Know that I could never, ever hate you for whatever it was that you wanted, for your will is mine. Even if it were something entirely new to me, something strange, it would be... well. Remember how we sow different seeds into pots for Nowruz? And when you put two different types of seeds into one pot, to get two different types of sprouts?"

"Yes?"

"Well, then. It's that we are the same pot. And whatever sprouts in it, it takes its life from the same soil, nourished by the same minerals, the same waters. So that which grows from you grows from my flesh and my soul also," he murmurs, she astonished at how close he is now coming to the very metaphors she had herself been thinking in, no matter how well she had hidden these thoughts from him. "It is the same soil you and I have sprung from," he says. "And whatever grows there, we will nurture and reap together--and weed together, if needs be," he whispers and kisses her hand. "Although I have never seen you blossom with anything except the fragrantmost of jasmines," he says, a little wistfully, "even when I have been a poor gardener and have been neglecting you, the brute that I have been. I promise to make up for it tomorrow, with a _thorough_ watering," he growls playfully and slips his thigh between her legs.

She cannot help but grin back at him, his smile so bright that it is to her like the sunlight peeking from behind days, weeks of dark clouds. "You are a fool, my husband, and that's why I love you," she sighs. "For only a fool would put up with my foolishnesses!"

"That's more like it," he sighs and takes her in his arms, hugging her so tight that she squeaks. "Until tomorrow, my love. God's peace and blessings be upon you," he whispers against her lips.

"God's peace and blessings be upon you," she whispers back, sighing out all her hopes and fears onto his lips, wishing for him to swallow them all as he always has done, and before she falls asleep, she thinks he does so indeed. 

She dreams of great pards, great beasts, now beautiful and now terrible: she dreams of monstrous flowers, flesh-eating plants rising from stinking soil. And over and over, she dreams of great Jaffar-dragons, tearing all of these creatures to pieces.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some doodles of Zahra coming to Emo!Yassamin's rescue [here.](http://aikainkauna.tumblr.com/post/159387199978/pmsyassamin-is-emo-to-the-nth-degree-zahra-isnt)


	3. Chapter 3

It is to his tenderness that she awakens. 

Yassamin had been drifting out of sleep, sleep porous and dirty and unrefreshing thanks to the wine, drawn towards wakefulness by Pain's relentless, cruel hands. Pain in her head, pain in her guts, pain in her hips: the burning, heavy, dull, yet at the same time knifelike pain of menstruation now overlaid with the foul, bloated and noxious pain of a hangover.

But now, Jaffar's hands are there to rescue her, to free her: he wrestles with the pain, uses his superior force to pull her body, organ after organ, free from its grip. From his years of experience of listening to Yassamin's body, from his having seen how acute and how terrible a woman's menstrual pains could be upon waking in particular, he wastes no time: he must act quickly so as not to let the pain overtake her. Thus, with his magic, he reaches into her bowels and forces them into utter stillness, knowing the morning's gut movements to be the most common culprit, the most common trigger of the most violent of uterine convulsions.

Even now, she can feel him thinking of that dread day he had found her collapsed in the bathroom in the early hours of the morning, in a state of shock from pain and blood loss: she had lain unconscious upon the hard, tiled floor in a puddle of her own cold sweat, with a rivulet of blood trickling from between her legs towards the drain. He had nearly had a heart attack, having at first thought her dead; having truly thought a man had assaulted her in the night. When it was only that she'd gone to relieve herself, nothing more; but the very act of expelling urine had awoken her womb's muscles, with disastrous results. He had heard of such cases, where the littlest of muscular exertions could, on the first days of a susceptible woman's bleeding, trigger uterine contractions as powerful and as painful as those of childbirth: it was exactly because these muscles were designed to push out an entire babe that their strength and capacity for contraction was so tremendous, second only to the muscles of the heart. 

Yet until he had met Yassamin, Jaffar had thought this phenomenon but a medical curiosity he had read of in a book: it was not until he had begun to insist that Yassamin forego menstrual seclusion that he'd had any idea of the reality such women had to endure.

Thus, after having witnessed such horrors first hand, Jaffar had set out to find out as much about this illness as possible: from not only books, but from living women, from midwives. And indeed, all had agreed that this pain could be, at worst, as if the woman were going through childbirth each month. But unlike childbirth, the womb would keep on contracting in greater and smaller waves for several days, with nothing inside the womb for the contractions to break against, leading some women to insist that the pain was, in fact, worse than that of the child-bed.

Yet Yassamin had been completely unready, completely surprised--and consequently, overwhelmed--by the pain, never having experienced such agonies during her menses before. Indeed, for most women suffering from this bizarre false labour each month, their pains had been present during their bleeding all their lives, beginning at their pubescence; only pregnancy--rarer on such women, too--allowing them a temporary respite. But for Yassamin, this curse, this delusion of the womb had struck her only after she had given up her contraceptive potions a few years into their marriage; she had never suffered like this until a year or so before their leaving for Samarkand, before she had become pregnant with the twins. She had been free of the pain while she had still been breastfeeding the babes, and thought she had been cured; but soon enough, to her great despair, the pains had returned.

But now, Jaffar, as not only her husband but her physician, is there to rescue her from the pains, drawing them out of her body with all his love and his care and his skill. And this is one of those days upon which he must remain especially vigilant, as he has been for the entire week: for the morning of the first day of such a woman's bleeding--never entirely predictable beforehand--is the most dangerous, the pain often attacking her out of the blue, sometimes even before a single drop of blood has appeared. The day of Yassamin's collapse had indeed been one of those instances: her menses had arrived several days early, and her bleeding had not started until later on in the day.

Thus, Jaffar has always forced himself to awaken before Yassamin does, whenever her cycle nears its end: so that he can be there to administer pain relief magical and herbal as soon as possible, so that she will never have to slide into the dread cold sweat of such pain, let alone unconsciousness. And now that he has personal experience of a woman's pelvic musculature, having possessed such himself, he does not merely know, but can _feel_ how all the muscles are linked: therefore, he now knows that in order to soothe the womb, he has to soothe the guts and the bladder, too; has to make sure all the muscles and nerves of the pelvic cavity are in as relaxed a state as possible. 

Therefore, he now leans over her and massages her back and her hips, sending through her body ripples great and small; with his hands and his mind, he now begins to apply varying amounts of pressure and vibration to each muscle, each organ. This is a technique he has had to hone over years and years, for it is not merely a matter of drowning the pelvis in heat and vibration: too much relaxation would be dangerous in and of itself. Therefore, as he casts his magical vibrations into her pelvis, he listens for the echoes flowing back from each organ and each muscle so that he may apply the right amount of relaxation to each, so as to keep the blood flowing and the nerves functional, and to retain enough muscle tone so as not to empty her bladder or her guts upon the bed. Neither will he try and stop the menstrual process itself, knowing it for a way for the womb to cleanse itself, to rid the woman of the foul humours that have gathered inside of her body during the past month. The womb's lining and the black blood are as dead matter, and therefore, must be expelled so that they will not linger inside of her body, rotting there and making her ill.

Thus, Jaffar's focus is on but reducing the blood loss and subduing the contractions; on healthy women, gravity itself is enough to take care of this expulsion. Therefore, he narrows blood vessels here, expands muscles there, pouring her womb full of heat: all through her, he sings to her the warmth of his love with the touch of his hands and of his mind. 

And she, so fragile in her half-asleep state, her mental openness, can but lie there, not even knowing what to say: to mock him for his doctorly thoughts, for his talking to himself with such medical detail even when he is inside of her... but no, to jest about it would be ungrateful and cruel. 

Of course, he hears that thought of hers, too, and lets it pass with a smile, just as he has patiently worked his way past all of her shames and her madnesses.

 _Relax,_ he tells her, now pouring into her through his hands such a wave of heat that it weighs her body into the bed like lead; it is a little erotic, even, the way he so takes her with his magic and his touch, the weight of him pinning her down into the bed. 

_There is no way in which you do not ravish me, my love,_ she thinks, a melancholy cry from the depths of her being. _All of me have you taken with your beauty and your majesty; all of me have you claimed, made whole, healed._

"That's more like it," he chuckles tenderly, recognising her words for the truth, but also identical to those of a Sufi prayer. "Remember what that same prayer says: had the soul not allowed itself to be loved, it would never have known God's love. And that is what I want you to do. Surrender unto my care, my sweet; let yourself be healed," he says. "And no apologising!" he adds, quickly, before she can feel ashamed for having given him any resistance.

 _I don't think I can **be** any more relaxed than this,_ she thinks at him, so wonderfully light in her mind that all sorrow has, for the moment, left it.

"Mm-hmm?" he asks, brushing his thumb across her anus playfully. "I could think of a few... occasions upon which I have seen you even more relaxed than this."

 _You are a beast,_ she groans to him and hisses through her teeth.

For now, as he has awakened her mind, so has he awoken in her the extraordinary desire, the veritable _heat_ she always feels during this time of the month, a powerful wave of lust surging through her from her cunny to the top of her head. Normally, the day her bleeding begins, pain and exhaustion would weigh too heavily upon her for her to act upon this desire, and she has always resented the illness for drowning it, preventing her from enjoying her body's natural sensitivity during this time. 

But now that the pain in her body has receded, she can only feel the incredible sensitivity of her cunny's walls, of her vulva, of her breasts; the tenderness, rawness of her heart and of her spirit, all of her aching to be loved and filled.

And Jaffar, having drunk from her love even during these days, knows exactly how powerful her capacity for experiencing pleasure is right now, now that all of her generative organs are flushed with blood and their nerves overly stimulated. Therefore, he, too, benefits from helping her, opening her to pleasures otherwise impossible: with a great and glad sigh, he lowers his weight upon her body, lacing their fingers.

Yassamin but laughs inside as she feels his nakedness, him seemingly having undressed them both while she had still been asleep; she thinks to scold him for having had this in mind all along, but that would make her a hypocrite. Indeed, is she not, this very moment, consumed by a great lust for mating herself? No, she is more than glad that he has now opened the way in her for--

_Jaffar!_

For now, he is opening her body indeed, sliding his cock slowly, slowly into her cunny with great care. Never letting go of her hands, he lifts her body with his magic, unfolds her cunny and guides his cock inside of her, making sure not to push in too deep, so as not to hurt her womb too much.

 _Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God,_ she thinks, discomfort and ecstasy fighting each other within her sex, every single cell of her cunny's walls seeming afire as he slides inside of her, all of her pulsing around his length, squeezing around him so violently she is giving herself that pain he had so carefully tried to avoid giving her. She mewls into her pillow and clutches Jaffar's hands as he begins to take her with slow and shallow thrusts, he even more conscious than usual of how much time it takes for the cunny to expand and to soften in order to truly accommodate a man. 

Yet, now, each one of his strokes is a shock that makes her shake, and immediately, she craves more. She is so wet, so ready, sure that it's not just blood that now slickens her insides; oh, but her body responds to him so swiftly that now, she is fully awake. Awake, awake, her cunny the centre of her being, tendrils of light unfolding from it; yet she does not know whether these fernlike curls are those of her own pleasure, or those of Jaffar's healing-magic. 

"A little of both," Jaffar moans and rests still atop her, forcing himself not to thrust, still careful--overly careful--in his waiting for her to soften for him. " _That_ most certainly is not all me," he laughs with boyish delight as her cunny squeezes around him.

"I love you," she slurs, now speaking out loud for the first time. 

"Mmm. I think the hangover might have something to do with it, too," he purrs and rolls his hips a little. "I know my sexual climaxes are stronger then, especially for my female body. So, you see, I couldn't _bear_ the thought of wasting this."

"I'm not falling for that."

"Falling for what?"

"You're trying to get me to scold you for engineer talk," she mumbles into her pillow and squeezes around his prick as hard as she can. " _'Sexual climaxes!'_ " she sighs and rolls her eyes. "When I would rather have you take me, you fool."

At that, he growls, pushing in a little deeper now, angling himself so that he slides into that space behind her womb: she thinks of quipping something back at him, but now, the ferns unroll once more, surging up through her spine into her ribs, her breasts, flowering inside her a tree: her eyes blossom white and her moans flutter onto the pillows a flurry of petals.

"Jaf--" she gasps, extricating her hands swiftly; she is so close, already so close, frustrated how her hands are not at her cunny yet, as another one of his strokes pushes through her that white--

"My God!" he cries, allowing her to lift herself so that she can ride her hands; as soon as he feels she has settled herself into position, he begins to plow into her with a deeper, harder rhythm, now that he can be sure he is no longer hurting her. "Let me feel it--"

But she is already surging into release, his blows a sap of light surging through her limbs, her branches, a hundred thousand flowers bursting into bloom within her being. When normally, she but feels these bursts in her womb and in her brain, and pleasurable ripples elsewhere, now it is as if her thighs, arms, torso, the very tips of her toes burst out in orgasm's florescence. She gasps in deep breaths, barely able to remember how to breathe so deep as to make her release utterly satisfactory and complete; the tiniest little sip of breath makes her swoon, and in her ecstasy, she fancies she is a field of flowers, jasmine upon jasmine flowering inside of her each cell. Yes, a field, a field bursting into bloom all at once; and now, the white somersaults into black and she shines a starry night: again a thousand little lights, sparks pulsing within her and from her, casting their light across the universe. 

And he her night, he her soil is there to catch her, only just: he drops his consciousness into her like rain, like ink, spreading within her, all of him shivering in awe as she emerges from him in these tiny dots, stars, these tiny blossoms piercing his darkness with their petals. Sharp white petals glissando down his back, playing arpeggios with his nerves; a cascade of a million little pleasure-sparks, all different and distinguishable from each other like snowflakes, yet all of the same light-matter of pleasure--oh--

It is then that she roars, moans, another wave of orgasm throwing her up from the bed; as she crashes back down into the mattress a blizzard, he follows her into his own release, no longer merely swimming in hers. He drives himself into her, avalanching into her in billowing petal-sparks of his own, ravaging her so that her cheeks and her hands burn against the pillows and the sheets; blood spatters onto both their thighs and his sack, but he does not care. It is a butchery, a battle, but that of love: he goring her in order to fill her with his love, he shooting his own self into her a comet. The white of his life-sap into the red of her flesh, his spirit, his sperm surging into her hips, mingling with her blood; and from there diffusing, breaking into its own little atoms, his stars dancing with her stars, his flowers furling into hers until she is enwrapped in his love, by it garlanded; starburst after starburst, he, too, blossoms within her like fireworks.

 _That we should even come the same,_ he now laughs into her as he collapses upon her, panting against the sweat of her neck; _already we speak the same, dream the same, and no longer is my pleasure distinct from yours. You have made me a jasmine,_ he laughs into her neck, light, glad. _Stars. And jasmine,_ he mumbles, as much as a man can mumble telepathically, little sparks of his love still skipping off his fingertips onto her arms as he holds her there, little drops of his white still pulsing out of his prick against the hot, hard heaviness of her womb. 

But it is then that a twinge of pain interrupts whatever it was she had been about to tell him; her womb curls in discomfort and immediately, he withdraws, murmuring apologies. His voice husky from exertion, he whispers runes to clean the mess from between their legs, his words like warm water gently laving both of them clean. 

"Don't leave," she says, for now that he has pulled out of her, she feels empty; even after two such massive waves of release one after another, she feels a little hungry still. She turns around onto her side, and can finally see his face; his wonderful, smiling face as he takes her in his arms so that they lie there, spooning.

"I shan't," he says and clasps her belly, again listening to her body. The wave of pain has disappeared as soon as it had arrived, as if his now holding her belly in the cups of his hands were protecting it from any pain-demons that would harm it, whether from without or from within. 

"Where did you put the cream?" she asks, rocking her buttocks against his hips, making sure he will not miss her meaning.

He but beams, raises his hand and snaps his fingers. Immediately, the jar of malva-cream slaps into his open palm, and his grin widens even further.

She rolls her eyes. "You have made laziness into an art."

"I'll have you know that this level of showing off requires, magically speaking, the strength of an athlete! Sessions like these with you," he grins as he slickens up his half-hard cock, "are little marathons, where magical energy is concerned."

She turns around and replaces his sticky hand with her own, kissing him softly upon the mouth. "And I am glad. Never have I felt as lavished with gifts as I have done in your embrace, my love; you know this." For what were all the ambergris candles, Armenian rugs and Chinese silks gifted to her as Calipha in comparison to the treasures he drowns her in in his marriage bed? What cares she for the finest of gold necklaces, the most precious of oudhs, trinkets of carnelian and jade--

"Ahem," he coughs, pulling back from her kiss, his eyes crossed from happiness. "I hope you do not mean to exclude the little jade fellow I gave you. Come, where is he? I would see you play with him," he says and smacks her on the arse. "Make yourself ready for me."

"But I haven't used him in an age!" she says, surprised. He, too, has sworn off their old, hard toys now that they've refined the plant-gum substance to create toys far more flexible and pleasurable in feel. "I can't remember where I put him. And I would rather have you instead," she says, kissing his nose, rejoicing as he firms further in her hand. "But I promise to give you a good show when I feel better."

He raises his eyebrow. "I shall hold you to that promise," he says, his eyes glowing with delight--oh, but she both loves and is exasperated by that look in his eyes, that ocean of perversions that now swells before her. 

"What have I started?" she groans.

He laughs into her mouth and hugs her close. "You started it by being born," he sighs in utter joy. "Come. How do you want me?"

"I would see your face," she says and lies down on her back; she slips a pillow underneath her hips so as to better offer to him her behind. "To see who it is that loves me," she whispers as she bites her lower lip, tensing a little as he begins to ease himself inside of her.

"Do you want to know what I think?" he groans as he dips his way inside of her arse, dips, dips; she is in too much discomfort to reply, so he continues immediately. "I think that sometimes, you lie there with your face down and imagine other men," he says playfully, his eyes twinkling.

He means it as a joke, he always having seen so deep inside of her he has no reason to suspect such things; yet this makes her wonder, makes those strange desires of hers rear their leering heads once more. What if he is right? What if she wanted to? What if she--

But quickly, she suppresses these thoughts, so confused herself that perhaps he will take it for but her being offended at his words--

But then, as he tries to change position, he slips and slams inside of her fast, too fast. "Yassamin," he gasps, now so overwhelmed by the squeeze of her arse that he does not notice her scattered thoughts; yet she is in a great deal of pain, now, he having penetrated her far too swiftly. "I am sorry," he murmurs, gathering her close, wrapping her limbs about himself; "I am sorry. Let me make it up to you, my sweet, let me," he meaows onto her lips, never ceasing in his movements inside of her, knowing that his staying still would make the pain worse. 

But as she gazes up at him, she still shivers, her eyes now full of tears. She tries to stroke herself, but it feels futile, now: those black and ugly beasts she knows not the names and shapes of now rise up within her self once more.

"But, Yassamin!" he says and kisses her, cupping her head with his hand. "Am I hurting you still?"

"Why did you have to say that?" she spits, her voice shaking, on the edge of weeping. "You would make love to me, take me, make me feel yours, and then imply I was another's?!"

"I'm sorry! I was jesting!" he cries, softening a little inside of her, so shocked he nearly slips out of her. "I am so sorry, so sorry," he says and makes love to her with all of his skill, all of his care, blanketing her in all the warmth and all the might and all the golden sunshine of his love.

And she lets that sunshine melt those beasts, lets it squeeze the tears out of her eyes until she is sobbing underneath him, the tears flowing hot down her face as her sap and blood flow heavy and hot over his prick. And all over this, his soft lamentations, soft and feline, his voice a tremulous caress over her skin. "Please forgive me, my sweet. I was cruel, I did not know how cruel," he sobs, his own guilty tears now falling onto her chest, tapping rhythms from between those of her heart's beats. She can hear him thinking of how he has betrayed her trust, betrayed his own principles--did his own father not tell him to never say anything that could be construed as negative when he was inside the woman he loved, no matter how playful? To do such a thing was not only ungentlemanly, but outright _monstrous_ when another opened her body to him so, already enduring discomfort and even pain for his sake; never, never ever would he wish to hurt his Yassamin so. "You are right. I am a beast. A terrible beast."

"Take me," she but gasps, her mouth wet with strings of saliva, her hand burning on her cunny: her arousal rises with as much anger as love, a maddened fury to now take from him her pleasure, like the greedy whore she is, the one who would be fucked in the marketplace by a dozen men--

"Yassamin!" he shouts, now seeing this vision in her mind, and he knows not whether to be appalled by it or aroused by it. Especially as he had been the man who had plunged her into orgies Sapphic, had pimped her to his own brother, to the Byzantine ambassador--would he dare judge her for such thoughts, his own practices having awakened such perversions in her in the first place?

He stills, his prick deep inside of her guts, and her womb aches. He stays still, incredibly still, now deliberately transfixing her with the pain his body is giving her, with the scrutiny of his eyes of angel-fire. He fights the urge to thrust, even stays in himself the urge to pleasure her and to soothe her--until he has extracted from her the truth.

"You are hurting me," she says, her belly rippling underneath him; yet, she deserves this, she knows this. 

"Be honest with me, Yassamin. That is all I ask of you."

"Jaffar--"

"Woman! Do you truly think I would fault you for _any_ perversion, the heathen sodomite I am? No. I would not. Even if you were to be fucked by the entire world," he spits, "I would not care one whit as long as were you still true to me, still honest with me. It is only the thought of you lying to me, of you keeping something from me that I cannot bear--what kind of a monster would that make _me_? The sort of despicable, low coward who inspires but fear in the hearts of those he should love and protect instead?"

She would shake her head if she could, but she is in too much pain to do so, now. Her teeth are chattering, her skin covered in cold sweat and gooseflesh. "I do not myself know the shapes of these desires," she whispers at him. "But, husband, mercy. Please release me from this pain, and I promise to tell you everything," she says, more hot tears trickling into her ears; "everything."

"Stroke yourself."

"I--"

He nails her into the bed with his gaze, thrusting into her angrily, with command. "Stroke yourself. Make yourself come. That's an order!" he barks.

And she owes it to him, does she not? It is exactly this that he needs, now, needs to exercise his power over her, to reassure himself of his lordship over her heart, his skill of manipulating her body, his ability to give her release.

And thus, she surrenders herself unto him, more completely than she has done in days, weeks: as he drives into her with a ravisher's brutality, she sobs in gratitude around him as she is dissolved by his blows. "Take me, husband," she sobs, offering up her hips, now willing them into the warmth that had disappeared from them, using all of her own magical skills to push away the pain, to allow him inside; "Fuck me," she groans, cries hoarse, her coarse words broken into stuttered gasps by his thrusts. 

And he is terrible to behold: all the veins upon his temples are standing up, his eyes staring wildly and his nostrils flaring like those of the guardian-dragons at the gates of heathen temples; yet it is she who he is guarding, is he not? He who would guard her with his life, tearing to pieces anyone who would hurt her, even if he found that person to be himself; it is himself that he blames now, his groans thick from phlegm as they ripple through his straining throat, tears glistening silvern upon the tendons of his neck. 

_I do not exist without you,_ he had once told her; _for you have given me a new life,_ he'd said, _and to that new life, a meaning. For what is one's life worth, if not lived in the service of Love? Nay, Yassamin: it is for you that I live, breathe and exist; for you that my heart beats, you the one all my thoughts converge around, you the one I perform all my actions around a dance joyous. It is through you that I contemplate the Divine, and through you that I find the Divine in myself: therefore, to lose you would mean being lost to the sight of God, and to be cast into Hell._

It is then that she cannot bear it any longer, and by means magical, she forces herself into orgasm, and with its force, grabs and wrenches and tears Jaffar's release from his body into hers. With a great scream, she bends double and swallows him into herself flesh and soul, her cunny and her arse milking him as she strokes herself, blood and sap bubbling out in ugly bursts from that grotesque flower that is her cunny, now. Always, always had he called her cunny a little rosebud, for the way it swelled from whenever she was extremely aroused, its petals whorled so thick about the bud of her clitoris; and now, in her delirium, she thinks this is Love itself bleeding, butchered, the way his prick sinks into her and is now spattered with her blood. It is a cavalcade of horrid images of destruction, an earthquake through which they both now fall into release, the very floor itself unsteady underneath their bed; finally, Jaffar cries out like a man stabbed as he spends himself inside of her, as if she were some ghoul now drinking from him his life-force.

"I am not, I am not, I am not," she sobs and embraces him, holding him as he falls into her, helpless; even as he slips out of her and her orifices slurp from sperm and blood, she hugs him so tight his bones creak. So tight does she embrace him that her very soul sinks into him, now; in the darkness of his flesh, she seeks her way to his heart, to the great wound gaping there, and slips inside. 

_Don't you dare think I would ever lie to you, desert you,_ she tells him, now firmly taking her seat in his heart. The way mystic minstrels always sing of the man of the heart, of installing God there, she now establishes herself at his centre once more, sewing shut that gaping wound with the needle and thread of her love, her care. _I tell you, I have not even known myself what has been the matter with me, and have not been able to put it to words. But for your sake, I will try; yet rest awhile, now, my love, rest awhile._

There, she sits and waits until his breathing and his heartbeat slow down; there, she sits until his body ceases to shiver and her own begins to ache once more. Stubbornly, she sits and guards him until her womb resumes its hideous contractions, worsened cramps always the price she has to pay for making love during her bleeding. Her body stiffens as her womb becomes hard and heavy and tense once more, and ugly chills travel up and down her spine, her womb torturing her entire body with its mindless thrashings. It's as if it's aborting some beclawed demon-child she cannot see, only feel: perhaps it is only fair that she should now be miscarrying this terrible beast within her that had caused both her and Jaffar so much suffering. 

Yes, that's what it must be, a miscarriage of the soul: they are but her own sins, her own foolishnesses, her own madnesses that she is expelling from her body every month; therefore, it makes sense that this month's pain is worse than ever, she having nursed within herself such deformed, twisted thought-monsters that it takes greater effort for her body to tear them out. Perhaps this month will, indeed, tear her apart; perhaps--

"Yassamin," Jaffar meaows and runs a shaking hand through her hair. "I can feel it. You're allowing the pain to return," he says and frowns. "Let me take it?"

And it shocks her, makes her feel so guilty that he would even ask; normally, he would not even ask for her permission to heal her, but would do it spontaneously, automatically. 

"Pr-prepare the op-pium for us-s, t-then," she says through chattering teeth. _And I will tell you everything, give all of myself unto you, all; good thoughts and bad, lay all of them at your feet. This, most sincerely, I swear,_ she whispers into his mind. 

But it is then that the pain overtakes her and she can no longer see, feel. The last thing she can hear is Jaffar's terrified cry from somewhere far away as she slips into unconsciousness, sweet unconsciousness, the pain severing her body from her self.


	4. Chapter 4

There is the touch of something wet and cool upon Yassamin's face.

"Welcome back," Jaffar murmurs as he mops her face with a wet towel, his face aglow with relief as he sits there, haloed by the morning light.

He looks his age, there, she thinks; sorrow and its smeared kohl having deepened the grooves underneath his eyes, the paleness of his irises now even more striking when surrounded by such darkness. Yet he seems calmer, now, less furious; a Jaffar more forgiving and more patient as he wets and wrings the towel once more and continues to mop her brow.

She feels a new calm within herself, too, and a little nausea: yet it is a strange, unusual sort of physical and mental state, as if Jaffar had given her some new kind of drug, or had put her underneath some new spell.

"Why are you using that?" she asks him, smiling, touched that he is not simply using a spell to wash the terrible stench of pain-sweat off her face.

"First, you were drenched all over, and I did not want to waste any more of my magics on something I could do with my own hands," he smiles back at her and kisses her forehead. "Secondly, the science of tenderness: I wanted to gift you with that sense of shelter only a loving touch can bring. Thirdly, you know how opium makes it more difficult to concentrate on spells that require sustained effort."

"Opium?" she murmurs, genuinely surprised: it does not feel the same this time, even if the pain relief and the mental calm are there. "Is it some kind of new formulation?"

"Not quite," he grins. "Just a different method of administration. You were unable to swallow, and I had to administer the drug quickly, so..." he takes the towel to her anus and presses there playfully. "I took the pipe, and seeing as you were still open wide down here, well."

"Jaffar!" she exclaims. "But how...?" she groans.

He holds up a narrow, silvern tube. "I used this as a straw."

"Oh, my God," she now moans and throws her arm over her eyes, but that does not help stop the image he now sends to her of the procedure: of her lying unconscious on her side and Jaffar blowing a hearty puff of opium smoke into her arse with the silvern tube.

"How does it feel different?" he asks, lying down beside her. "Tell me. I am curious."

"Well, there's less nausea, for a start," she murmurs. "There's still some left, but nevertheless, my head feels a little clearer."

"How about the aphrodisiacal effects?"

"I am too ravished to tell, you old goat!" she says and pokes him in the ribs. "Really. I ache everywhere, from the bleeding and you. If there were any extra swelling there from the opium, I would not be able to tell."

"Fair enough," he says and laces his fingers with hers. "How about the mental, spiritual effects?"

She closes her eyes and listens: thoughts come and go, but around them all, she can feel the ease and detachment opium always brings--the reason many mendicants consider the poppy holy, the way it helps one let go of whatever one is clinging to. The clouds of melancholy that had veiled her heart are finally parted: for the first time in weeks, she feels as if she can take a step back from her strongest emotions, look at even her problems with a kind, compassionate eye, without being drawn into a whirling, screaming, wild chaos. Yet beyond this detachment, within her very core her heart lies open, shockingly open. A voice, one very distant and very quiet, tells her she should have a care--in this state, she might be so honest and so frank and so sincere she might put herself in danger were she to talk to someone who did not possess this same level of compassion and loving kindness; the right kind to receive her words without judgement.

"Yes," Jaffar laughs, "this is why the followers of the Buddha so love their opium. I, too, am always reminded of their teachings--wisdom-compassion and loving-kindness, all this talk of thoughts being but clouds that pass us by."

"The source of the Barmakids' wisdom, then?" she grins, her normal God-fearfulness gone or at least greatly reduced, in that she does not feel as if she is blaspheming whenever speaking a good word of the philosophies of the unbelievers.

He but grins back at her. "Perhaps. As to your voice of warning," he murmurs and kisses her hand, "you are safe with me, beloved. Always. With or without the opium, and you know it. But as usual, I did make sure to take a decent dose myself, so as to harmonise our moods." Now, he frees his hand to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, then rests his palm upon the fullness of her cheek. "Are you ready to tell me? For I would act not only as husband or physician, but spiritual counselor to you, too," he murmurs. "As always."

As if she could ever forget! But in her heart, she knows why he is telling her the obvious: she knows that she needs to be reminded of these things, needs to have them written in fresh ink upon the paper of her consciousness today, in order to remember she is surrounded by their blessings. 

Therefore, she kisses his palm. "Say those things again."

Jaffar but smiles gently and pulls a blanket over them both, using its weight and its warmth and its shelter as a ritual tool in and of itself, to further anchor her into the knowledge, the presence, the immanence of his loving care. 

"My beloved," he says, now cupping her face in both of his hands, his eyes flickering with emotion, "the heart of my heart, the soul of my soul, the self of my self. I am here today as your husband, as your physician, as your spiritual guide to give to you whatever it is that your heart, body and soul should need, God willing. Will you now let me carry at least a part of the burden of whatever it is that ails you, so that your own burden may be lessened?"

She presses her forehead against his and murmurs a prayer. "Yes, God willing," she sighs. 

He wraps his arms around her and cradles her head against his chest, as a mother soothes a babe with the sound of her heart's beat.

"I apologise if my words, my images are unclear, my love," she says, "for this is the first time I am trying to make sense of these things myself."

"It is no matter," he says, nuzzling her hair. "We shall unravel their meanings together. And now, you will have the knowledge and the wisdom and the brains of not just one, but two living beings to make sense of it all!" he smiles. 

"All right," she murmurs against his chest. "Be merciful with me."

"Have I ever been otherwise?" he asks her, and she can hear a little hurt in his voice.

"I'm sorry. You are right," she says and squeezes his hand. She owes it to him to be brave, owes to him the truth. "Always, always have you been to me more merciful than God Himself, and I do not care if I blaspheme," she says, for God does not forgive certain sins, like idolatry; yet in her heart of hearts, she knows Jaffar would forgive her even that. Inside, however, she laughs a little bitterly at the concept--what would their equivalent of idolatry even be? For her to have other men beside him? 

Yes, well.

She draws in a deep breath and lays her soul open wide.


	5. Chapter 5

***

**The next day**

***

"I am going to _undo you,_ " Jaffar tells her as he stalks around her with the gait of a great cat, tracing the soft nakedness of her belly with the tip of his cane. "So unravel you that none of this... _wretch,_ " he snaps and flicks her hair back with the cane, making her gasp and jerk back in her bonds, "shall remain." 

He retreats, a white flash of silks upon the edge of her vision, and lets her dance there upon her toes for a moment, hanging as she does by her wrists in the centre of the room, suspended by Jaffar's magic bonds from the low, vaulted ceiling. 

For it is here in the shabestan, after many months' absence, that they have come to play: the site of the most perverse--and most deeply and most thoroughly loving--of all their erotic plays. 

It is as a womb, this chamber, Yassamin thinks, the womb of this house that is their home; and now, she is startled by this realisation, amazed at how she has never thought of this before. 

Yet it is exactly that. For this place is, for her and Jaffar, the place of creation, of building, of transformation: and not only so for their devices, but for their very selves. Here, they perform their greatest magical rites, greater in depth, greater in spiritual nourishment and insight than any of the ordinary, orthodox rites of religion they perform upstairs. And it is here, on rare occasions like these, that they sink so deep into the darkest, most subconscious, most profound depths of their love that every time, they emerge from them different persons altogether, a Yassamin and a Jaffar made anew.

Jaffar raises an eyebrow at her, a wistful little smile breaking even through the mask of the stern disciplinarian he is wearing for this purpose. For he has heard all her thoughts, and has also noticed the guilt that is now creeping up upon his Yassamin in their wake: her guilt and her shame over however many times they have had to do something like this, and yet she would still fall, ruining all that he has built in her--

"Enough!" he cries and swishes his cane in warning. "Let me finish."

"I am sorry, master," she whispers and stills.

"That's better," he says, acknowledging her with a nod; slowly, he drags the tip of his cane up to her throat, lifting her chin with it. "Just as an automaton that's rusted and damaged needs to be undone piece by piece to be cleansed, strengthened, mended, so am I to take you apart, piece by piece, until this _mockery,_ this _grotesque,_ this _travesty_ of your true self is no more." 

Again, he whisks away at her hair, this time only just hitting the tip of her ear in warning, even that little stroke astonishingly painful for its unexpectedness. "Do you understand?"

Now, her eyes are staring wide, she surprised at how soon he has started to give her true pain: it is obvious that this is to show her just how serious he is, how he is not playing around, tonight's ritual no little playful spanking but a thorough, complete cleansing. Of the cesspit that is she--

But at that thought of herself as so foul comes a cruel stroke right across her breasts, so horrid she is sent swinging, stunned from the pain and from the force of his blow. _Has he drawn blood?_ she thinks, alarmed.

"I will, if needs be," Jaffar says as he balances her, seemingly shocked himself at his own brutality as he glances at her breasts. Yet as soon as it had appeared, the face of the concerned husband disappears underneath the mask of the stern spiritual master once more. "There's no blood, for now. But you must listen to me."

"Yes, master," she groans, her hair fallen over her face.

He tucks his cane underneath his arm and combs her hair from her face, tilting his head with a soft, feline coo, coaxing her to listen to his words; easily, he picks up her gaze, blurred and unfocused, with the evenness, the unyielding strength of his. 

"Already I told you I not only understood, but accepted everything it was that you wanted to experience tonight, my sweet. But I think that you, in your self-pity, have forgotten that I, too, have my flaws, and that neither of us is perfect," he smiles a little ruefully. "We would not be here had I not been so lost in my work: imagine the guilt _I_ feel for having let your wounds lay untreated for so long. Who whips _me_ when _I_ forget?" he asks with a sad little laugh, quirking his eyebrow. "Perhaps I should make _that_ your punishment sometime; to not give you these thrashings you so love, but to make you deliver me one of your own," he grins. 

"Don't you dare!" she groans.

"That's better," he purrs and kisses her nose. "That's more like the Yassamin I know. Not a cesspit, and not foul, and not terrible. In fact, your fantasy is identical with one of mine, one I have cherished ever since I was a young man, do you know?" he laughs, a little disbelieving. "Perhaps it was from _my_ mind that you picked it up in the first place, finding a berry ripe, yet unplucked; or perhaps when my mind was otherwise occupied, my own perversions slithered into yours and took root there. No wonder you could not cope with them; I barely could."

She but looks at him, her eyes flickering. "Do you really mean that?" she asks, even if she is not too surprised. 

"I do."

"But it's different for a man," she says and lowers her head. "It is but expected of a youth to dream of... these things, but a woman's honour would forever be ruined."

"I know," he says and draws in a deep breath as he steps back. "That's why I said it must've been unbearable for you. The hypocrisy of men--" he shakes his head as if to clear it, then meets her eyes with his. "That is why want to do this," he says, softly. "To undo at least some of the damage; to lift us above such foolish limitations, such poisonous mores," he spits. "I hate them as much as you do, but never more so than when they hurt you, Yassamin; when they stop you from fully being the woman you were born to be: as desirous as me, as passionate as me, the female half of my own self."

 _For every time they have lashed you with shame, every time they have forbidden you something that they've allowed for men, they've hurt **me,** imprisoned **me,** my beloved;_ he now says to her without words. _We are the one and the same, and I would we lived and loved the same, whether fools would deem our desires perverse or not._

But now, he snaps into movement, dancing back, swishing his cane through the air with such force it makes a whistling sound. "Seven strokes. For your sake and mine. Then we'll begin."

And it is with the very first stroke, a cruel one across her belly, that he nearly severs her consciousness from her self. Perhaps he is hitting her this hard to get past the lingering remnants of opium in her bloodstream; perhaps it is because he has rarely seen her this miserable, she thinks as he lets her dangle there, letting the pain truly sink in. 

And for this, she is grateful: with this, and all his further strokes, she forces herself to remain deeply conscious of the effects of each blow, aware of each and every nerve the pain flashes along sharp, white. The nerves of her spine, stretching out like a tree's roots and branches into her torso and her limbs; smaller branches, tendrils, all of her a white tree in white leaf, blossoming with white flowers of pain. Delirious, she thinks of how this is not at all unlike the way he had made her blossom with pleasure earlier: love, pleasure and pain all taking the exact same routes through her body, whether they drown it in agony or bliss. 

Agony and bliss, bliss and agony, no difference between the two for her, now: for with each and every stroke, Jaffar beats his love into her body, the whiteness of his suit inseparable from the whiteness of the pain he delivers with every stroke. He the white lightning of pain itself, he the whiteness that strips her consciousness from her like willow bark until all that remains is the living sapwood glowing white; he the white-hot core of the sun now burning her vision into white, white. 

He whips himself into her until he is nearer to her, nearer; become the white fangs of pain itself, he strikes into her body a cobra, swallowing her entire. The white of his silks merges into the white of her flesh, the red ribbons of pain unfolding from her skin and tying her and Jaffar together, pressing their flesh into one until there is no more Jaffar, no more Yassamin, only the one single being of white.

And there they hang, suspended in the darkness a dot of white, that white seed, that white sperm-drop of the Divine Essence all of Creation springs from before it multiplies, differentiates, one becoming many. The reversal of becoming, the reversal of unfolding, the flower furling and withdrawing into its stem, into shoot, into seed, quiet within the soil of the earth. In this state of non-duality, in this stage of oneness, of undivided perfection they dwell for an unmeasured amount of time, sated and complete.

But stillness is never forever, and just as God had wished to contemplate Himself through His Creation, projecting of Himself myriad forms in which to see Himself reflected, so does Desire awaken their seed from its slumber: slowly, Jaffar and Yassamin pull apart and become distinct souls, distinct selves, distinct personae once more.

Desire, Desire, that which exists solely in order to create, to experience joy, the current that drives all of Life: thanks to its divine call, both of them are now again summoned into their individual existences, selves.

Desire, Desire: slowly, it emerges out of the soul that calls itself Yassamin, purses out of her as a drop of golden resin glistening upon the trunk of a cypress. Quivering as it fills, fattening, swelling upon the surface of her self, in this drop can Jaffar now see all her wants and her needs trapped as if insects in amber, them finally having taken shape within this sphere he has with his whip pressed, condensed out of her. Just as the earth's bedrock needs to crush raindrops, sunbeams with immense force over millennia in order to create diamonds, so has Yassamin's confused, scattered, amorphous desire needed the firmness of his fist to take shape, to become tangible, to become an entity he can now commune with, intercourse with. His love the shovel, his whip the pickaxe to bring her treasure out into the sunlight; and now, step forward his care and his skill, to cut and polish this crude mineral into a brilliant, shining jewel.

Like a drop of rain, he glides off her, and in doing so, he plucks from her her heart's desire. 

She remains inert upon the floor, quiet, lifeless, nude; she lies there in the attitude of one prostrating, her belly against her thighs and her face pressed against the floor between her outstretched arms, still bound at the wrists.

He walks into the centre of the room, holding her desire in his hand. 

Immaculate in his white, he stands there and cups it against his chest as if a fledgling fallen from its nest, cradling it against his heartbeat.

After a moment of silence, he looks up at her, solemn, then taps his cane three times against his thigh.

"Yassamin, daughter of Mahmoud, of Basra," he says, firm, loud, commanding even the automatons in this room into silence. "I hold within my hand your heart's desire. Would you now have me give it life?"

She does not answer. She remains still, panic now chilling her body into a new kind of whiteness: the arctic cold of sheer terror, fright. For is her desire not a mirror image of a woman's worst nightmare? How could she say yes?

 _But it is only fair that you should be afraid,_ Jaffar now thinks at her, listening to her with a great compassion nestled within his firmness. _I should have phrased it differently,_ he now murmurs to her within his mind. _Let us try again._

"I, Jaffar, son of Yahya of the Barmakids, do most solemnly swear to now take this your desire into my power, to rule it, to master it, so that not a single one of its actions will not be subject to my will, my wish, my command; so that not a single one of its deeds will not be guided by my hands, my knowledge and my skill. For it is as it always has been between us, my dearest beloved: everything that is yours is mine also, and whatever is wanting in one is by the other fulfilled. And thus, over all those things within yourself that you have no power over, shall I lend my mastery and my command. So is fulfilled the great Law of the one soul God has split in twain for the sake of love: never shall one not balance the other, level that which is in the other tumultuous, mend that which is in the other riven. This is God's will, that of equilibrium, of _as above, so below:_ it can never be otherwise.

Therefore, Yassamin of Basra, do you trust in my hand your heart's desire?" 

With great difficulty, she lifts her head, and as her eyes open, she is blinded by his radiance: a white flame, a white beacon does he now stand within the darkness of the room. 

_Her_ beacon, _her_ flame, _her_ divine lantern held out to her by God's All-Merciful hand: he the one to guide her through her own darkness, the black cave of her fear and her despair to the loving heart, the loving home that awaits her inside.

"I love you," she sighs, too exhausted, too happy even for tears.

He smiles at her, a smile wide, his crooked teeth glistening white; his eyes sparkling with a joyous, glad light. "Well?" he asks with a little laugh and swishes his cane playfully, looking from his hand to her eyes again. "What is your answer?"

"Yes," she smiles and nods, a white-hot pulse of heat slamming through her body from her sex; "Yes."

He lifts his hand slowly, slowly, letting her see the glimmering cupped within his palm; as he lifts her desire, so is her heart lifted with it, all of her becoming as light as air. He closes his eyes, yet they keep on flickering underneath his eyelids, his eyelashes fluttering sharply against his cheeks; his frown deepens as he murmurs out words in a language strange and ancient.

For these are no longer words Persian or Arabic, nor the crude runes of the Northmen; neither are they the weighty power-syllables of Sanskrit. Sharp, golden characters now shimmer upon his tongue, sliding off his lips in thin and pointed shapes reminiscent of arrowheads. Like little clusters of golden thorns carried by a narrow, golden brook, the words of his spell now lift up into the air a shimmering ribbon, swiftly circling the entire room. 

As Jaffar finally stops speaking, the words remain whirling around the shabestan's walls, gathering speed until the sigils themselves blur and become but swirling lines, forming a golden wheel spinning and spinning around them. Higher, higher Jaffar lifts his hand until his arm is fully extended, and now Yassamin can see he is holding up the spell with his arm as if a pivot for the golden stream to whirl around, the swirls arching over his fist like the spokes of a parasol being twirled, all of his body straining as he holds up this golden dome. The power builds and builds until it seems as if he can hold on to it no longer--or, rather, going by his smile, he has finally raised from the spell a power great enough to please him, a power worth his wielding.

"Come!" he cries.

He tips his hand and lets the desire-drop fall. 

It splashes onto the ground a raindrop, and now, to Yassamin's great surprise, the entire golden dome comes crashing down with it. A gentle ripple of heat, like that of a summer's breeze goes through the room, washing over and through both their bodies; but after it subsides, the gold is nowhere to be seen. The room is again dark, lit only by the circle of twelve lanterns around the room.

Yet before her, Jaffar grins in great delight, obviously enjoying Yassamin's bafflement. 

It is then that the shadows underneath the lanterns begin to swell, and all the hair upon Yassamin's body stands on end. 

Terrified, she watches as these shadows begin to take on the shapes of men, their outlines sharpening and growing beneath the lanterns' light. Short men, tall men, thin men, fat men, men of medium build; some not even men but more like some hybrid beasts, resembling not human beings but rather animals. Who are these creatures? Phantoms created by Jaffar himself, or real living beings? Ghouls, ghosts, djinn? Are they but illusions given life by his magic, or spirit-guests he has invited here from the inbetween realms for this very purpose?

Jaffar but keeps on smiling, his leer ever wider as he twirls his cane and takes two steps back into the shadows, disappearing from her sight. 

"Take her."

The shadows leap out of the walls and swallow her.

Slow, fast, the shadows begin to slither up her legs like snakes, spiralling sinuously up her calves and thighs until they reach her buttocks; there, with a rattle and a hiss, they lean down and flutter out their forked tongues to lap at the slit of her sex. Gasping in her horror, she arches her back, only for her gooseflesh to be raised higher by the touch of other shadows like wings, beating and fluttering all over her skin. Now, others, like impatient hands, lift her head and her upper body so that they might capture her breasts, open her mouth for the taking.

It is then that she screams, screams from the bottom of her lungs as innumerable hands, claws, teeth, tongues, pricks so press and push against her body; scentless, fleshless, yet hard and cold and hot and soft, the shadows now claim her entire. Her heart races, and she cannot breathe; when she tries to draw in a breath, her nostrils are pinched shut and an invisible shadow-prick is pushed past her lips. She shrieks around it, screams until she is choked with it, gagging in further horror as fingers, tongues glide into her arse and her cunny, penetrating her there, lapping at her there. 

_Jaffar!_

"What's the matter, my sweet?" Jaffar asks with a mocking croon; she cannot see him for the shadows, for what feels like a pair of soft, furred thighs now covering her eyes. "This is exactly what was in your head," he purrs silkily. "It's all yours."

_Are they real?_

"I've just told you, my sweet. They're all yours, extensions of your imagination, but given life: a shadow-life, if you will, but tangible enough, as you can feel--by me. Do you really think I could have shared you with goblins and ghouls?" he laughs incredulously, yet he knows that she knows he might, and she would not have asked him otherwise.

 _You are a bastard, Jaffar, such a bastard!_ she shrieks into his mind as cold, wet--is that spit? Phlegm? something else?--now splashes onto her arse and the cruel, invading fingers slide deeper inside of her, rut in and out of her with greater ease.

He but sighs in delight. "I do so love the way you look when you are angry."

But she is not angry, rather furious at her own lust, at the swiftness with which her body responds, now fully aware that she is now _ravishing herself_ , shocked at the power of her own mind and what it is now giving her.

For now that this ravishment can take any shape she--or Jaffar--desires, being made of but thought alone, this means that the shadows do not have to obey any of the laws of Nature any longer--least of all those of anatomy. Therefore, three mouths can take her cunny and her arse at the same time, one sucking her clitoris while another's tongue slips deep inside of her cunny, deeper than a human tongue ever could. As sinuous and as wet as a tongue, however, it now curls and slaps inside of her sex, dragging across her cunny's walls as thick as a cock, yet the tip of it still tickles the very back of her womb, dipping over and over into her most sensitive spot. Oh, but already it is as if that tongue were striking sparks from the back of her womb, sparks striking up her spine, into her breasts, her nipples now being bitten and clawed and pulled by more ghouls until no part of her remains untaken.

She keens around the tongue's length, clenches around it so violently that were it Jaffar's prick, she would have pushed it out by now; but of course, being made of magic, the tongue but keeps on taking her, caressing her cunny's deepestmost reaches in a way Jaffar's fingers or prick never could. She shivers half in disgust, half in delight as parts of her that have _never been touched_ are now claimed, taken, _deflowered_ by this band of shadows. 

And now, the shadow that owns the tongue pulls back and gathers force, then slams into her body so violently it blows the air out of her lungs, she thrown forwards with a surprised cry: while she still tries to balance herself on her hands and her knees, it begins to pound into her with the weight and the power of a heavy man behind it. That heavy man she has seen, felt in her dreams, her nightmares; always faceless, always but an embodiment of the power of the male body at its most terrible, the power of crushing, ravaging. 

Yet--to think of it!--now, this power is perfectly enslaved to but her pleasure, all thanks to Jaffar's will, hers; honed and poised to take that part of her body that gives her the greatest, sublimest of joys. Never has she had that place hit with such force, not even by Sarosh, his prick much blunter than this; never has even his prick moved so sinuously, or become pointed or curved in the same manner. Already these creatures have set her afire, taken that heat of her womb and her cunny and fanned it into a conflagration of flames; already the pleasure makes her eyes roll back in her head. 

Oh, but this is Jaffar's relish, too, him using this shadow-mass to take her in ways he has never taken her before; this is not merely a matter of him proving himself, not merely a matter of him showing her he can satisfy her every desire: it is also a way for him to pleasure himself in turn. 

For indeed it is he himself now slithering into her, just as the prick in her mouth now bends, slims itself down so that it can enter her throat easily: upon a whim, Jaffar decides to weave in a stilling of her throat's muscles there, too, a stilling of their natural reflexes, as an additional treat for them both. 

As Yassamin realises this, she shrieks around the shadow-prick even more loudly, spittle bursting out from between her stretched-out lips. Oh, but it feels wonderful, gloriously, sinfully wonderful, this: being opened, helped into realising her dreams of whoredom, so that she can become but a channel of pleasure alone. Truly, this is what she had dreamt of, of becoming but pleasure-giving itself, the Great Harlot who turns away none: serving prick after prick with ease, entranced by the rhythm of their sliding in and out of her. The dance of the men of her fantasy, now become the dance of the shadows upon her; innumerable hips sway into her and her hips answer them all, just as Yassamin the harlot would have offered her hips in the marketplace, that goddess Jaffar and Zainab had once made of her. 

What must she look like to him? 

"Let's have a look, shall we?" Jaffar says playfully, yet her vision is still obscured by all the shadow-men crowding her. "Move back a little," Jaffar says, murmuring a few more syllables in that ancient language, the magical words sounding like those of earth being swept with a broom, of curtains being pushed aside. 

The shadows retreat, and Yassamin makes a noise of protest: already her throat is sore from being so taken, but the prick that had filled it had felt wonderful as soon as Jaffar had let her enjoy it without gagging--she had only just begun to truly appreciate the feel of the cock itself, the wondrous pleasure of it, now that her body's natural reflex of ejecting it had not stood in the way.

 _Why?_ she asks Jaffar with her mind. 

Yet now, even the tongue-prick is withdrawn from her cunny, the spit-slicked fingers from her arse, and she is left there heaving, untouched, alone: oh, why was she fool enough to wonder, knowing his love for displaying her, for sharing with her that display?

"Oh, but that's _beautiful,_ he croons. "Beautiful, my sweet; beautiful." 

At first, she can see only the darkness, but immediately, he opens his vision into her mind as if turning open a page: she, in a stark beam of Jaffar's artificial light, a circle of white cast by one of his magical light-spheres hovering from the ceiling. And all around her, the living, shifting, swirling shadows now obeying their master's command, standing aside to display her to Jaffar, to better show to him her state. 

She crouches there upon all fours, and what she sees shocks her: only for a few moments has she been taken by the shadows, yet already her cunny is swollen into a great, thick, reddened peach. Strings of her sap dangle from her folds, but that's not all: the sap has formed an entire _puddle_ underneath her, fast trickling towards her knees. It astounds her--even those times when she and Jaffar had been watching themselves in the crystal, she has never seen herself this aroused, so soon: why, this is more reminiscent of those times he had shown to her her state following hours of wild rutting!

"Oh, my God," she whimpers, closing her eyes and leaning into her arm; but of course, one cannot close one's eyes to a vision psychic.

"Ashamed, my dear?" Jaffar chuckles from the dark. "You shouldn't be," he purrs, giving her cunny a little stroke, making her jerk from his touch, from the shock of how sensitised she is. "Your little cunny _likes this,_ " he lisps, his voice slithering into her ears a mocking croon, as slippery as her cunny beneath his fingers; "it does, my little sweet, it does," he chuckles, obnoxious.

"Jaffar!" she cries. She is unravelling into his hand, her entire body straining, all of her rippling higher, higher--

But it is then that he slaps her cunny and lets go, chuckling even more as he watches her tossing there, listening to her frustrated litany of the most unladylike of curses. "Now, pleasure me a little, too, would you, my good fellows?" he says to the shadows, and going by the noise he makes, Yassamin is sure he is clasping his prick in his hand. "By which I mean that you should show me a little more."

The golden arrow-head syllables tinkle about Yassamin like golden needles raining onto the floor; the shadows rustle and turn to take her once more. Yet this time, some of the shadows disappear, but their touch doesn't: she realises Jaffar to have turned some of the shadow-men invisible, to better see the effects of their touches upon her. 

Now, never taking his gaze from her, Jaffar shows to her the invisible hands cupping her buttocks, squeezing her thighs, grabbing at her and slapping her, her flesh compressed and pinched and jiggling with their manipulations; the fact that she cannot see the hands, but can _feel them_ creating such a dissonance in her mind that she feels light-headed. Therefore, she but focuses on trying to tell the different ghost-men apart as they serve her to Jaffar's gaze: this fat and hairy belly here, this smooth and thin, Jaffar-like pair of thighs now opening about her head, calling her to worship at his smoothly-shaven shadow-genitals. This pair of hands--or is it three hands?--entirely animal in their hairiness, their claws: these, Jaffar, in his mercy, does not let anywhere near her genitals, but in his cruelty, takes to her breasts and her belly and her thighs. 

Her eyes closed, watering as she mouths the smooth testicles, she moans around them as she can feel and see her thighs now marked by red welts, clawed by invisible talons; she shivers at the dirty cackles now ringing in her ears as the shadow-ghouls pull at the folds of her cunny, taking pleasure--just as Jaffar does--at the way they always swell greatly in size at her arousal. Their fingers open her cunny for Jaffar to see, fingers thick and thin and blunt and elegant, all pressing into the plush, fat, smooth-shaven flesh to expose to him the pink within: the pinkness, and within it--

 _But there is no blood!_ she thinks in astonishment, only now realising she has not spilled a single drop.

 _I took the liberty of performing the womb sealing-spell as I rinsed you,_ Jaffar now tells her. _Why, would you not have wanted me to?_

 _It feels strange,_ she now thinks, gazing at her own cunny through Jaffar's eyes, so completely fresh and clean and wet and sweet even if her womb and her entire pelvis are afire. Never has she felt this before, the tremendous arousal she only feels during these days now completely untainted by blood; is this how wet she truly gets during menstrual sex, when the blood is taken out of the equation? She had always thought the messiness to be the fault of blood alone, but given the extreme sensitivity of her cunny and her womb during this time, all her tissues sparking with pleasure from the lightest of touches, it makes sense that she would produce more slickness, too.

But no, no; she would rather be kneeling in a puddle of sap than blood, right now. _Thank you,_ she tells him, pulling back from the shadow-Jaffar, letting his balls slip from her mouth as she draws in breath; "Thank you," she says out loud. For it is the greatest of gifts that he has now given her: all the sensitivity of the menstrual period without its bleeding, a cunny so alive she swears it's as if she has suddenly grown a hundred thousand new nerves. And for the first time in her life, she does not have to worry about the mess!

But she would be taken, she now tells him. _What is the use of this gift otherwise?_ she thinks at him, not truly scolding him, yet the ache within her is now so enormous she would have release. "Please, husband," she asks, nuzzling the smooth shadow-prick still before her, to better transmit her feelings to Jaffar, knowing he will feel this caress upon his own sex in turn. "Please, take me."

"You heard the lady," Jaffar says, warmly, now sounding like he is much closer to her--and is that his breath she can now feel upon her cunny? 

That is how close his gaze now is as he takes his seat behind her, sitting upon the floor right behind her: the shadows remain invisible, or out of the way, as they are now arranged into suitable positions by Jaffar, to give to her her taking. For always, even when preparing her for an imitation of a crude ravishment, Jaffar utilises his singular talent for beautiful composition, he having told Yassamin that watching people copulating in certain positions gives to him, at times, more pleasure than he'd derive from performing the acts himself.

But then she can think no more, as slippery fingertips now begin to rub at her cunny with more pressure and more weight than ordinary fingertips ever could; for now, even if her hips are still lifted, this feels exactly as wonderful as her riding of her own hands, with the entire weight of her hips behind her thrusts. Oh, but Jaffar knows her so well as to imitate her favourite method of masturbation thus, knowing intimately the swiftest routes to the greatestmost of her pleasures; she cries out in surprise as these rubs now make her cunny pulse and clench over and over. 

"Please, please, please," she is soon moaning, even if three shadows now offer to her their cocks to be pleasured by her hands and her mouth; other shadows come to hold up her torso horizontally so that she can remain on her knees as she strokes these invisible cocks, sucking each one offered to her mouth in succession. Thick and slim, short and fat, small and large, she serves each one, thinking she is serving all of manhood itself; and within all of these shadow-men, she is serving a part of her Jaffar, he as present within each shadow just as God's spark is present in each and every human being. Even as the pricks leave her mouth and begin to take her cunny, each one taking her in his own manner, she sobs in her realisation of this, her tears mixing with the strands of phlegm now running down her jaw. Hard and soft strokes, long and short thrusts, fast and slow ruts, all of them her Jaffar: never could she have had this satisfaction from but random strangers, only Jaffar able to engineer a scenario that guaranteed her these pleasures, these insights. 

_And don't you dare feel ashamed for it,_ he tells her when she begins to think of what a fool she had been; _I, too, dreamt of orgies as a young man, as I told you. But strangers have a pesky habit of having minds, personalities of their own,_ he chuckles at her, _and on top of that, they're often too selfish to pleasure anyone except themselves. It is thanks to my knowledge of this that I now know how to give you this,_ he sighs with great tenderness and delight. 

_It's wonderful,_ she thinks back at him, another cock leaving her mouth, making her drag in a wet breath, each cough of hers making her cunny clench around whichever cock is now taking its turn penetrating her. "Don't stop."

A little ashamed himself, Jaffar realises she has not come yet, what with the pricks always leaving her just before they've let her reach the peak: and here, he is talking about how he has bypassed selfishness! "My apologies, my sweet," he murmurs and now guides another shadow to take her, one of the cocks of a more reasonable girth, pressing it slowly into her cunny. 

And there, Jaffar's consciousness remains, he listening for her body as the prick enters her, making sure it is now aimed just at that great pleasure-spot of hers at the very back of her sex. "Is that better?" he purrs, now so close to her she can swear it is indeed Jaffar's own hand that now rubs at her cunny, he using magic upon his hand to maintain that steady, firm, unnatural pressure.

Her answer is but a long groan, her hands and her mouth now set free as the shadows retreat from her; for a brief moment, Jaffar allows her to brace her crossed arms upon the floor, she now rocking back against the lone prick, the lone pair of soft shadow-hips taking her. _Please, please, please--_

"Fuck her," Jaffar snaps in Arabic as he slaps her arse, now commanding the shadows in terms far more prosaic; "as hard as you can."

But then, he becomes silent and but focuses on maintaining the pressure of his hand for her to rut into, following the movements of her hips; even as she screams so loudly she must be hurting his ears he remains firm, never ceasing in his giving to her of his hand. He listens to her body, to each one of her womb's ripples, guiding even the shadow-lover to leave gaps between his thrusts for her orgasm to flow, the way he always does himself; even as Yassamin wets his hand entirely with her spray, even as she makes the most undignified of bellowing, low, animal noises does he keep on going, not stopping until he has made sure the last waves of her release have ebbed.

Still shuddering, she makes to turn around, to thank him: but it is then that the prick that had been taking her cunny, now slickened from her sap, begins to immediately press into her arse. She suffocates a shriek into her arms, her cunny now sore as Jaffar but keeps on rubbing it, relentless: again, he shares to her the vision before his eyes. 

Both the invisible hands and the black shadow-hands come to squeeze and grope at her again, pulling out sensation from every single part of her body; in contrast to the overwhelming pleasure-pain of sodomy, they now tug upon her hair, nipping at the soft flesh of her arms, clawing at her breasts and her thighs. But she does not know if this is to distract her from the pain or to but spread it out, to paint the rest of her body with its whiteness, to make all of her burn with its high and bright and blinding flame. This must be it, she thinks, assaulted as she is from all sides so, again taken in her throat, too, so that all of her is penetrated, pierced, impaled. She quivers there, so stiff from the pain that she cannot even move, only letting her body be used, taken by the tongues that now lick up her cold sweat, by the fingers--Jaffar's?--that now curl in her cunny, by the horrendous, giant prick now forcing its way into her arse.

For now, it seems as if that prick has swollen, feeling far bigger than it had done when it had been taking merely her cunny; but now that it is invisible, all she can see is the shocking openness of her own arse: a wide, distended gape, the muscles of her entrance moving to and fro, the yawning cavern of her innards as if breathing around the ghost-prick's girth. The sight sickens her and arouses her beyond measure, the very extreme nature of it making her cunny now pulse against Jaffar's hands; Jaffar himself is wild, mad from his arousal at the sight. She can feel his cock jerking within his drawers, feel the way it's drenched in its own sap, slipping within its nest of warm and wet silk. 

Between the blows that force her vision to flash white as she sucks upon the cock taking her mouth, each glimpse she sees of her arse as it is taken brings another clench out of her cunny, another little spurt of wetness from it, spraying down upon Jaffar's fingers a rain. Oh, but her cunny squeezes as Jaffar's cock jerks, squeezes against the cruel curlings of his fingers as they greedily clutch to themselves the surrender of her flesh: the way the muscles of her anus are now a completely smooth ring, dragging upon the invisible cock that takes her, the way her guts' mucus paints a ring of foam around the unseen shaft, marbling it with her secretions.

It is at the sight of this ring of foam--Jaffar's great weakness--that she can hear him whimpering; now, there is a short sob and a mewl and a warm huff about her arse as he licks up that ring a madman. Furious from his need, he even forces the prick to withdraw from her arse so that he can mouth it, suck it, swallow it, dissolve upon his tongue her taste. She cries in indignation as the cock is removed from her: so close had it come to reaching her greatest depths, those nerves from which an orgasm would immediately strike through her body. 

Yet this is exactly why Jaffar now chooses this moment to indulge himself, to prolong her torment as he indulges his own perversion. Here, for a brief moment, he panders to the hopeless sodomite in himself, apologetically working his fingers in her cunny harder and faster to sate her as he commands the ghost-prick to take his mouth instead; again, her vision turns white as he fucks her with his hands so hard she is sloshing, and it is the feel of her own foam upon his moustache that pushes her over the--

And then, the ghost-prick is in her arse once more: in but two long and fierce thrusts, she is unravelled around it, coming violently all over it. Always, always the brief removal of a prick during sodomy makes the arse a hundred times more sensitive upon subsequent entry, Jaffar knowing this phenomenon well: that, and now the prick's strokes press Jaffar's fingers into that soft spot at the front wall of her cunny that turns her into a fountain. The prick in her mouth is pulled out, and now, thick strings of phlegm spraying from her lips, she howls hoarse from the bottom of her lungs; her eyes stare wildly as the ghost-prick taking her now slides easily past the bend of her colon, each one of its strokes now a blinding flash of light through her body. She is melting, she is crackling, she is burning, dissolving entire like camphor; she is no longer but a series of waves but one high, sublime peak beyond all pleasure and pain.

Slowly, she floats down, and hears a little noise from behind her: perhaps that is Jaffar gasping in astonishment at the way her clitoris now pulses, so swollen it is like a little prick against his hand. She is raw, raw everywhere, every single touch of Jaffar's and the shadows' hands and pricks bringing her such great waves of pleasure that each one is the equivalent of one of her weaker orgasms during other times of the month, she realises, laughing madly inside at this revelation. So high do these waves now leap that her breasts, her belly, her entire torso are orgasming on and on, smaller pleasure-waves now rippling all over her limbs. Oh, but she is coming even with her fingertips, white pleasure-sparks dancing in her hair, she herself a speck of dust whirling in Pleasure's sunbeam: delirious, she but soars and soars as the waves tighten and merge to become yet another peak, peak, peak.

She can but laugh, now, laugh with tears in her eyes as her first release is overtaken by another, the last waves of the first now triggering a second cascade of pleasure all through her flesh, even Jaffar astounded by it. She can feel he had thought to take his hands out just now, but if anything, she is burning even hotter now, coming even harder, now: and the strangest thing of all is that this isn't one of their body-and-soul orgasms, one of their more spiritual joinings, but one almost entirely that of the flesh--yet hardly ever has she experienced such pleasure, such raw, animal, physical pleasure. 

A third time, her ecstasy crests, and again she laughs as she can hear Jaffar worrying that soon she will snap his fingers off; she but slams her hips onto his hand in wild abandon, glancing at him over her shoulder, grinning even as her teeth rattle in the aftershocks. There is no rhythm to her hips, all her movements uncontrolled, her body but jerking erratically upon his hands, now; when she finally loses control of her body completely, the shadows let go and allow her to collapse upon the floor.

"I don't believe it!" Jaffar blurts as he finally gets to pull both of his hands out, them shaking from the strain; his fingertips are wrinkled entirely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick sketch of the spell Jaffar cast with the cuneiform characters, [here.](http://aikainkauna.tumblr.com/post/159508638158/apologies-for-the-messiness-as-i-really-cant)


	6. Chapter 6

Now, the shadows turn more tender, turning Yassamin around and lowering her to lie on her back. And there upon the floor she lies, panting, her entire skin covered with a fine mist of sweat, she so wet between the thighs they make a smacking sound as she parts them. She is drunk, happy, relieved, drunk, drunk; and yet all around her, the shadows hover still, dropping soft kisses upon her skin, caressing her, massaging her, behaving not at all like brutal ravishers but rather a sea of ardent slaves.

"When did the bonds come off?" she mumbles, looking at her wrists. Normally, after this long a love-bout, her wrists would be sorely chafed; yet now, her knees seem to have borne the brunt of her suffering, burned raw as they are.

Jaffar's answer is but a mumble; still short of breath, he mutters a rune and levitates both of them onto the bed, getting rid of his own clothes in the process. And once they are upon the bed--the shadows still hovering around them, Yassamin notices--Jaffar but clings to her, as if with a strange sort of jealousy. 

It amuses her to think of it, she strangely touched by Jaffar's claiming of her with his arms thus: after all, this has been, technically speaking, an act of masturbation. For have they not just had an orgy with their own imaginations?

"I have barely had an orgy with anyone," Jaffar grumbles and presses his own erection, still sticky, into the softness of her belly.

Yet he seems exhausted, from having had to use so much magic, it seems: this is not the first time he's performed a complex spell for the purposes of a love-play only to realise it has left him with a massive erection, yet without the strength to do much about it.

Therefore, Yassamin curls her hand about his prick, kissing him softly. "Yet you have not dismissed the shadows," she says, searching his eyes. There has to be a reason for that; she is already well-ravished, so he must have been saving some of the energy for his own pleasure.

"Correct," he says and lets out a jaw-cracking yawn, the yawn turning into a hopeless moan. "Oh, I _hate_ this. My prick's as ready for a mounting as a young stallion's, but the rest of me is as exhausted as an old pack-donkey."

"Would you let me try and guide them?" she says, glancing at the shadows hovering around them, not with a little trepidation; but however daunting the idea of her controlling them herself is, it would still be a shame to waste them.

"Are you sure?" he asks.

"I have got to learn how to control my demons," she says, as if it were a joke, but inside, she trembles. 

He can tell that, too; for a long time, he but regards her there, measuring her with his eyes. "I might not be able to stop them, should something go awry," he says, his voice soft, now, creaking with worry. 

"Can you halve their numbers? So that we would only have half a dozen?" she says. 

"Three?" he says, glancing at the shadows. "I might be able to control three. But I will still need to rest awhile, first."

"Three it is, then," she says.

At that, Jaffar lies back, his palms flat against the bedcovers and with his eyes closed, again flickering underneath their lids. The sounds he makes are strange: they are picking sounds, snatching sounds, clicking sounds as if he were picking up the thorn-shaped magic syllables from wherever he'd been scattering them, plucking them out of the aether and snapping them in half like twigs. Gold dust hovers about his lips once more, but now it seems to be pouring into his mouth rather than out of it: there's more colour in his cheeks, and the trembling in his limbs subsides as he absorbs the power of nine of the shadows back into his body. Slowly, two thirds of the shadows melt away into the greater shadows of the shabestan, and only three of the smaller ones remain. 

Jaffar lets out a soft sigh and the three shadows step forwards into the bed, now taking upon themselves the shapes of great cats: soft of foot, curled of tail, they rumble around him in great delight. 

In awe, Yassamin watches as the three shadow-pards purr and butt their heads against Jaffar's hands, his hips, his cheeks; one of the cats even gives Jaffar's sticky cock a tender lick. Jaffar but laughs and jerks underneath the cat's touch, petting its head just as he would Ishtiaq's, guiding the cat to rest its head upon his belly instead. 

_Is its tongue as rough as an ordinary cat's?_ Yassamin wonders, not wanting to speak out loud: the shadow-cats, children of Jaffar's imagination or not, seem so real she does not wish to disturb them.

 _Thank you for reminding me of that,_ Jaffar thinks at her and waves his hand, a little golden shimmer curling about the cats' mouths. _I can get quite carried away with detail. But no, I would not have them ravish us with spiked tongues, or, heaven forfend_ \--and he guides another golden curl about the cats' genitals-- _spiked pricks!_

"Us?" Yassamin says, lifting onto her elbows.

"Yes," Jaffar grins, his eyes sparkling pale and his crooked teeth glimmering in the lanterns' light, the light in the shabestan softer now that the shadows aren't crowding them from all sides. "I've changed my mind. I don't think you've been ravished nearly enough, my sweet," he says and runs his fingertips across the underside of his cock. "Take her."

She does not even have time to cry out before the pards are upon her, pinning her into the bed, kneading her with giant, softly padded paws and lapping at her with quick, now-smooth tongues. And she does not want to give Jaffar the satisfaction of protesting, either--after all, why should she? Instead, she throws herself into this new experience with great relish, delighting in its outrageousness without shame, now that her satiation still glows warm within her belly like wine. 

To think of it! Being taken by cats, the most elegant of creatures, the beasts she has so often compared Jaffar himself to! Oh, but this is but a part of his vanity, it must be; the pard no more and no less than his heraldic beast, the animal form of his soul: these shadow-panthers a fantastical incarnation of his own self, now split into three magnificent black and silver beasts out to devour her.

And now that she is no longer bound, she devours them back, caresses them back, all the hair on her body standing on end; but now, this horripilation is no longer that of terror, but brought on by sheer excitement, a perverse thrill of this act of mock-bestiality. Why, had the virgin Yassamin been told her future husband would make her mate with dozens of other men, women and animals, she would have fainted away from sheer horror; yet now, the grown Yassamin reels underneath the warm, sinuous, lithe bodies of these great beasts in shameless delight. Just like the heathen goddesses of old lounged upon their leonine thrones, rode their tigers into battle, took their leopards into orgies in Dionysos's name, she now stretches among the beasts a lithe and soft cat herself. 

She answers kisses from large, dark, soft and wet muzzles, her cunny tightening as long fangs drag in hunger across her throat; she laces fingers with giant paws, great claws pressing into the backs of her hands in firm and cruel promise. She runs her palms across warm, silken flanks, black fur glittering with gold and silver in the lanterns' light; underneath her hands, within strong ribcages there beat three great and majestic hearts, her own heartbeat now joining theirs to beat in time. Long whiskers tickle along her sides, tongues lap at her breasts, making her jerk and spread her legs to entwine around strong, muscled, silken thighs; the beasts' weight presses her into the bed and their purrs rumble through her body, deep and dark and sweet. Silken pricks rut against her thighs, painting them with glistening trails of dew, mirroring Jaffar's slow arousal now rising higher and higher, until the entire room is again filled with the scent of saps male and female, human and animal. 

Firm paws spin her onto her stomach, pressing her into the bed once more; an impatient tail whips about her legs and the skin of the back of her neck is snatched up between sharp teeth. 

_Yield,_ a voice half Jaffar's, half a cat's purrs in her ear; the paws that now press her shoulders into the bed become more humanlike, the legs now kicking hers open those of a man despite being covered in silken fur. _Yield, my sweet child; yield,_ the voice purrs as a drop of fragrant sap splashes onto the small of her back.

"Please," Yassamin moans, trying to take her hands to her cunny, so swollen and aching, now, desperate for touch; yet, of course, the paw-hands snatch her wrists and pin those into the bed, too. Now, the slick tongues lap all around her sex instead, making her cry out into the pillows in her torment; sharp fangs take play-bites off her skin, worrying at the fat of her thighs, buttocks; the long, silken prick swells against the small of her back, heavy as it rests there, far bigger than Jaffar's own.

From the corner of her eye, from beneath her hair that's now fallen over her face, she can see Jaffar shifting to lie on his side beside her, can hear his heavy breathing; he is stroking his cock, his sap now so voluminous it pulses down over his knuckles in glistening rivulets. She thinks she can spy a dark shadow between his thighs as he draws one of his legs up against his body, a shadow-tongue darting between his buttocks--oh, she would not put that past him, now sure of what she'd seen as Jaffar lets out a hoarse cry, another spurt of arousal trickling over his fingers. 

"Please," Yassamin cries once more as the tip of the giant, silken prick nestles between her cunny's lips, seeking her entrance; already she can feel its enormous girth, all of her stiffening in fear of pain. 

"Please, what?" Jaffar asks, his voice rough and thick from heat.

"Please, Jaffar, mercy. Please, let me touch myself."

"Oh, but I insist," he grins as he lifts her hair from her face with his sticky hand. "Insist on doing it for you, that is," he says and licks his own sweetness off his fingers. "Stroke her," he says and returns his hand to his prick, hissing as the shadow behind him makes his hips buck at its caress; "then, let us see what our little harlot can _really_ take inside of herself."

Her eyes fly wide at that, but as soon as she makes to scream, a soft paw-pad closes over her mouth, sharp claws pressing into her cheek, her hair flying from her face as she puffs in vain; another paw slips underneath her belly and finds her cunny, Jaffar's intimate knowledge of her body helping it find its mark immediately. Deftly, the paw--mercifully, with its claws sheathed--parts her cunny's lips, draws up the top of her slit and finally, lowers her cunny onto the fleshy pad so that her clitoris is nestled into it entirely, braced against it. 

"How's that, my dear?" Jaffar asks, with no intent of removing the ghost-paw from her mouth.

But she cannot even make a noise, cannot even send to him a thought: so enormous is the smooth, thickly muscled cock now sliding into her cunny that it feels as if it's filling her entire body, pressing empty her lungs. And knowing this has got to be but the beginning, knowing Jaffar means to ravish her arse, too, she can but tremble in the hot, silken embrace, shivering as the pards' paw-hands hold her firmly in place. In and out, in and out, the giant feline cock slides into her body and out of it, making way for itself in her flesh, she nauseous rather than aroused as all her innards are pushed up by it. She is stretched just to the point of pain, reminded of that first time Fadl had taken her, when she'd had to ask for him to stop because he had hurt her too much with his size: yet, now, in her present state of arousal, her sensitised tissues respond even to the pleasure-pain with some perverse delight, and yield.

Her cunny is so full of blood, hot blood rushing and swirling in her hips, blood rushing and pounding around the pard's prick; she fancies she can feel its own, ghostly pulse beating inside of her body, pulsing against her womb as he stills: even the scent of wet cat fur, that distinct scent of a cat washing itself, has Jaffar engineered to emanate from the ghosts as an analogue to the sweat of a human lover. Never does he let her forget that she is being taken by cats; if she makes to swear at Jaffar for too-slow or too-hard a thrust, he lets her feel the claws upon the paw that rubs her upon the outer lips of her cunny, only just. It's terrifying, so genuinely terrifying to her that once he senses her fear, he withdraws the claws immediately and placates her with a kiss upon her shoulder, turning the pard's strokes gentler and longer and sweeter; yet her body takes this rush of fear and turns even that into a new wave of arousal, the chill a sickening pleasure in and of itself. 

_Concentrate, my sweet,_ he tells her, making her gasp as he licks at the sore skin of her neck where the pard had bitten her, man's nose and pard's muzzle now breathing upon the rawness of her neck soft and sweet. _Concentrate upon what is new in this to you, so that I might drink from it, too,_ he whispers, and now he is pulled back into a kiss by his own pard, arching his back into the shadow that now bends his body a bow. _Show this to me, my love; show me this, show._

And she shivers around the panther's cock, shivers as she is now kissed by the second pard, a kiss of sharp teeth scratching her lip and a rough tongue brushing her palate; despite being so overwhelmed, she focuses all of her consciousness upon her cunny. 

It is now that she finds she has some power over the ghosts at least, in that every time she experiences true pain, she can manipulate the pards enough to end it. They allow her to lift her hips, allow her to guide the pard taking her to change the angle of his thrusts so that he is not hitting her womb, but sliding behind it instead. Even then, the paw rubbing at her cunny always follows her, no matter what her position, and retains its full pressure upon her clitoris; the ghosts again blithely careless of anatomy human or animal. 

Thus, she remains in a strange, half-lifted position, embraced by one man-pard underneath her, one curled over her, losing count of hands, mouths, tails, tongues, teeth. Firm, muscular thighs cup around hers, the beast's sack slapping softly against her cunny, even the sound it now makes entirely different from a man's; there are but the quietest, softest of slaps as the soft fur muffles the sounds of their rut. 

And its prick, oh, its prick! Now that her cunny's walls have expanded enough, now that she has become wet enough, now that the cat takes her in an agreeable position, the hollows of her hips unfurl in a pleasure bright red like petals: like a thousand roses she unfolds around the beast's thrusts, each and every stroke as violent in its pleasure as a little orgasm. 

Already, she has reached that stage where the pleasure consumes her so that she cannot help but gasp, moan, mewl: instinctively, her body demands from her the kinds of breaths and sound-vibrations that further heighten the shivers of pleasure now given to her by the pard's thrusting. Her voice joins its movements, Jaffar allowing all paws, all kissing mouths to be removed from her lips so that she can draw out each little tremor, spin it on and on with the vibrations of her voice-- _Why, my little nightingale's love song!_ he calls it with a great fondness, sweetness.

"I can't--I can't--stop--!" she sobs.

"Don't!" Jaffar laughs. "Show me," he rasps, now calling even his own pard into stillness so that he might drink from Yassamin's release. 

For a brief moment, she is, in fact, terrified: the pard's prick is so thick it is barely allowing her cunny any room to contract, and she worries she might not be able to orgasm at all, the same problem she has at times had with Fadl's girth. But now, her cunny is so alive with sensation, so enormously sensitive that she has been on the edge of orgasm all night. Even a stray breath upon her cunny could make her come; of that, she is certain. All she has to do is to let go, to surrender, to surrender fully, to let this foolish logical mind of hers--why, her inner talk is almost as bad as Jaffar's!--be torn to pieces.

It is at that that the pards answer her, and the one taking her pushes her roughly down, attacking the back of her neck with his teeth, biting into her so hard she sees stars, and she thinks he might be drawing blood--his strokes become longer, longer, slower, deeper, so brutal--oh, God, he will gut her, gut her with his prick a sabre--

It is from far away that she hears her own scream, all of her become but a sea of black and red and the white of claws, of flashing teeth. Flashing, flashing, all of her a red sea unfolding around the might, the majesty, the massive strength of this beast's prick. Yet it is no more and no less than her Jaffar's prick; Jaffar always the centre of her being, always the holy phallus around which she worships a heathen. 

Yet there is an anguish to the pleasure she drinks from the pard's strokes, an anguish and a terrible need: for as he, as Jaffar withdraws, it is as if her very soul is being pulled out of her, her cry pitiful, tortured, mournful as her cunny and her womb convulse around this sweet emptiness, even if she knows he has left this aching hollowness in her for but her pleasure's waves to flow. 

But he never remains parted from her for too long: a joyous, husky cry bursts out of her as the pard's prick returns with another brutal blow, throwing her against the bed of his brother's body, his firm, muscled, silken body. Lovingly, he now serves Yassamin to his ghost-twin and the cruel ecstasies of the second pard's claws and his fanged mouth, immediately there to capture her, enrapture her in his web of sweet pain. There, the second pard embraces her with great relish, making of her his toy to but pleasure himself, the beast she has always known and loved in Jaffar taking his fill of her. Tearing at her breasts, sucking upon her tongue, lapping at the scratches he's made, he wraps her in red petals of his own, the burning red marks of his paws upon her body. 

And while this pard's claws are still sunken into her breasts, the pard at her back roars, grabs her by the hair and tears her up, inflicting such violence upon her breasts that tears fill her eyes; yet her cunny, always betraying the pain-glutton in her, squeezes around his monstrous shaft harder than it ever has done before, she sobbing helplessly in her pleasure-pain. Her tears splash onto her breasts, mixing with the tiny beads of blood the second pard's claws have drawn out of her skin; these, her necklaces of coral and diamond, Jaffar bejewelling her with his cruelty's beauty.

There, there she blazes, her pleasure so high the red petals of her ripples are become red banners, pennants in the wind of Jaffar's heavens; she billows around the firm heat of the shadow-prick taking her, furls and unfurls in a release soft, light as air, sublime, sweet. The pard at her back lets go of her hair and with a great moan, she falls onto his brother underneath, her moan triggering further, endless ripples of her cunny around the other pard's still-thrusting prick; for a long while, she but lies there, fluttering. Fluttering, fluttering, her cunny, her lungs, her fingertips fluttering; her hair fluttering with her breathing, a leaf tossed upon the now-gentle breeze of Jaffar's love of shadows and air. 

"That's very good, very good, very good," Jaffar purrs beside her, an obnoxiously bland compliment in comparison to the vastness of the pleasure he, too, has just been drinking from; but he knows that only makes her cunny clench once more in sheer fury, and laps it up. 

The pards allow her to turn her head enough to look at him, and wonder of wonders, he has not come yet, it seems; he is now so hard his prick is purpling. 

He notices the worry with which she is looking at his prick, and but laughs. "You should be proud of yourself, woman! Just look at how hard you've made him, without the aid of a single ring or strap!" he says and kisses her shoulder. "That should be compliment enough."

"However," she begins, but it is then that the pard atop her withdraws and she shudders, drawing in a stuttering breath, she unable to even fill her lungs properly from them having been so crushed by the pard's blows. She draws in another breath and tries again. "However, I _insist_ that you come take me, now, husband. You will do yourself damage otherwise." 

He but rolls his eyes--they have been through this before, yet he knows her to have been right whenever she has been reminding him of the simple, medical fact: prolonged tumescence, especially when regularly induced, will eventually weaken the blood vessels of a man's prick, making it more and more difficult for him to maintain erections in the future. And seeing as Jaffar's love of delayed gratification--well beyond the gentlemanly delay-practice that but ensures a woman's pleasure--has been a lifelong obsession, well. He hates being reminded of it, but that's what he gets for being so stingy with his compliments, she can now hear him thinking. 

"All right," he grumbles, waving his hand so that the pards all disappear for a moment, blending into the shadows around the bed.

She but grins at him as she lies there upon her belly, leaning her head on her crossed arms, wiggling her buttocks. "Or then it is that I merely want you inside of me, finally, my fool of a husband," she says.

"Just me?" he says, and with a roll of his hand and a flick of his fingers, he flips her onto her back.

"Jaffar!" she cries, groans, now she whose turn it is to roll her eyes.

For again, the bonds come around her wrists and spread her arms and her legs once more: she means to tell him that she is already breathless, already sated, but it is no use. The pards reappear, now only gray shadows half-transparent; one takes her head upon its knees, one slips underneath her and a third lifts her legs and spreads them further. So many paw-hands now come around her legs, so many lifting her hips that she wonders if Jaffar hasn't multiplied their hands, so that now there are more than three pairs upon her: she can feel a pair of hands underneath her knees, another pair holding up her ankles, another pair spreading out her cunny. Yet another pair now spreads out her buttocks, further nimble, padded fingers spreading out the folds of her anus, a quick tongue slipping in to lick at her there; she cries out at that, only for her noise to be captured with a muzzled kiss from the pard now holding her head, a curled tongue lapping up her cries with fast flicks as if they were cream. 

Yet it is of no use: she will have to yield herself to this, Jaffar's desire always a stubborn one, demanding to be sated to the utmost. And this is exactly what she had wanted, is it not? One of his long, thought-out love-plays, exhausting and perverse and thorough, full of elaborate detail, engineered to wring out every drop of pleasure possible from every part of her body and her soul. It is exactly what she had wanted, exactly what she needs, exactly what she deserves, Jaffar chuckling and purring beside her, kissing her ear in reward at her realisation of this. As silken fingers slip into her arse, spreading a rich, honey-scented substance inside of her--oh, merciful God, it is the thickest of their creams--she is grateful even in her terror, terrified even in her gratitude. 

For the thicker the cream, the more ambitious Jaffar's fantasy, the more outrageous the demands he makes of her body: they have only ever used this particular cream for those rare times she has taken giant toys, taken both him and Fadl together, those times when she has taken into her arse his entire hand. 

"Exactly, my sweet," he says and now strokes some of this cream onto his own cock, pressing close to her, so close it should be impossible when she has a man atop her and underneath her, but it is as if he erases parts of the pards' arms and legs just to be able to press against her side, greedy to touch as much of her skin as possible. "Never let it be said I let down my wife's desires! I promised to myself that I would fill you as you have never been filled before, and I intend to keep that promise. I advise that you take a deep breath and relax, my sweet," he murmurs as one of the hands curls its fingers inside of her arse, Jaffar now the one drinking her gasp from her lips; "you will need it for what I am about to attempt."

For what he's about to attempt? Fill her as she has never been filled before? As one of the pards slips inside of her arse, with a prick much slimmer, thank heavens, she wonders feverishly what Jaffar might mean by that. But of course, he keeps his mind closed to hers. _What--_

But then, the overwhelming intensity of being taken through the arse again leaves her wordless: even if this shadow-prick is not as enormous as the one that had been taking her cunny, she is so consumed by the sensation that she cannot think anything for a moment, only sense. Sense the enormous pressure inside of her body, not merely pushing up her internal organs and her lungs but shocking them into stillness as well; cold shivers clutch at her guts as the prick, however silken, now slides deeper and deeper inside of her. There is the whiteness behind her eyes once more, even if she is not at her tightest, having been sodomised not half an hour ago; for no matter how tender, sodomy always carries with itself a brutality, a sense of invasion, of impalement, of helplessness.

It is then that, sensing her stiffness, Jaffar whispers a rune and the pards begin to purr, purr loudly, making her entire body vibrate around the invading cock; she moans in gratitude into the cats' mouths, into Jaffar's mouth, tasting his sap and the metal-salt of her own arse upon his, their tongues. Soon, the strokes melt into those of delight, the whiteness turning into the familiar lightning-whips of enormous nervous pleasure-shock; she, too, begins to melt around her taking, her cunny dripping and swelling underneath the paw now caressing it. 

"Is that better?" Jaffar whispers upon her lips, he slipping his hand to her cunny, now; replacing the paw with his fingers, capturing her clitoris between them. "Is that better, my sweet?"

"Yes," she rasps, moaning deep from the bottom of her lungs in a pleasure vast and bright, letting the vibrations of her own voice join those of the cats' purrs.

"Good," Jaffar whispers and kisses her cheek.

But it is then that she realises that there is something missing: for the prick taking her is shorter than Jaffar's, never quite reaching that bend of her colon, that special place behind her womb; she squirms a little and looks at Jaffar in askance.

He but chuckles. "I simply wanted you to know what it's truly like, being made love to by different men," he says. "Some slimmer and shorter in their members than others. Imagine my disappointment when a short-pricked man first took me, when my only experience of cocks had been of Fadl's!"

"You're a fool," she slurs, her eyes half-closed. 

"Mmm. Would you like some more?" he asks, still rubbing her, his own eyes slit from pleasure.

"Please," she asks. "Pl--"

But she cannot even finish the second word before the pard underneath her begins to push inside her arse, too. Her eyes fly wide and she screams, but another pard claps its hand over her mouth once more; she screams out profanities, insults at Jaffar, all muffled by the paw-pad as she is so stretched. And here, the pards alternate, conquering more and more room for themselves in her flesh with little dips: one prick dips into her arse from the front, then pulls out so as to allow the other to slip in from the back. And thus, they continue for long moments, stretching her, expanding her; now, she is nauseous from worry, from fear of being injured that she feels dizzy once more.

"Shh, shh, my sweet," Jaffar purrs, placing his hand over her breastbone, pouring his love-magic into her heart from his palm like a soothing wine; "I told you to relax. Breathe. You took me and Fadl there, did you not? More than once."

Even in her terror, even in her vertigo, she knows Jaffar to be right. She had taken both men in her arse indeed, years before she had even borne her children: therefore, why should she now have any trouble taking the pards? After all, she has more room for them now than she did for Jaffar and Fadl that first time: despite never having given birth in the normal manner, she had noticed her pelvis had widened from her having carried the twins, as her body had been preparing to give birth to them. Therefore, surely this means that she can now take two pricks, especially if neither is as thick as Jaffar's, let alone Fadl's? 

This is what she tells herself, desperate, yet her body fights even the relaxation Jaffar is now pouring into her, fights it out of simple reflex, even if her mind wants her body to yield. What if she should tear something? What if she--

But it is then that the upper pard's prick slips in fully, sliding over his brother's underneath: she stops breathing, and her eyes roll back in her head. 

She does not know how many moments she has lost consciousness for, but when she returns, she can feel Jaffar inspecting her, he still rubbing her for pleasure, the pards still purring around her to force her muscles into relaxation. 

"There's no blood," he says softly. "Good girl," he murmurs, kissing her cunny, kissing the ring of her arse now stretched around the panthers' pricks, pouring some more cream onto them, inside of her: "Good girl, good girl, good girl."

She cannot answer him in words; she is floating on a sea of light. Now, all the red and the white she had felt before melt into gold; the roses and the jasmines she had blossomed in now begin to bloom like golden lotuses, a thousand petals unfolding within her. She is so relaxed, so open, so well-made-love-to as the pards begin to move inside of her once more; her cunny, her arse made of honey, her entire flesh made of honey. 

Honey, honey, even as Jaffar moves atop her and finally slips his cock into her cunny--of course he would! That makes perfect sense to her, now, and inside, she but laughs, laughs and whirls and twirls in this white hollow that her body has become. She is so vast, so expanded now that there is room in her to be loved, to be taken by the entire world, she thinks in her euphoria; and at that thought, three pards and one man-pard purr out happiness and push ever deep into her, in time. 

And as she blossoms there, so does a new understanding blossom within her mind, within her flesh as it is now so opened wide: for is this not like the immense opening a woman's body is subjected to during labour? she thinks, astonished. And if she could never give birth in the normal manner, is this not the closest she will ever come to experiencing it? 

Her body filled with Jaffar's love, rich and heavy with it, her body put to the test, stretched to its utmost limits as she brings life into this world. Perhaps it is strange that she should think of such giving as she is being so given to, filled; but this does not mean her revelation is any less true. 

Perhaps it is the very stretching of her body indeed that now releases in her humours akin to those of a woman in child-bed; perhaps it is because her womb--and with it, her entire body and her self--is in a state of outward flow, that flow now made a flood by what is being done to her. After all, each time she and Jaffar make love so entwined, it is a sowing of spiritual seeds, a nurturing of shoots from the soil of the self; every time as orgasm blossoms through their bodies, it is a flowering of something new in their souls. Each act of lovemaking for them, no matter how brief, no matter how playful, is for them another rebirth. What new Yassamin is she giving birth to this very moment, what new Jaffar?

 _My little mystic,_ Jaffar thinks and caresses her cheek with the backs of his fingers, trembling atop her. _To my great shame, I did not, in fact, think of it at first; but you're right,_ he thinks and takes her mouth with a contented sigh. _Show me, my beloved sweet; show me how you give birth to joy._

She cannot open her eyes, her eyelids having become too heavy to do so--is gold not the heaviest of metals?--and she but lies there and lets herself be loved, taken whole. Her mouth is opened, her cunny is opened, her arse is opened for cocks to move in and out of each and all of her openings. The pard at her head slips his prick into her mouth, now, too, to complete the circle, for she would feel hollow, now, were some part of her not filled. She fancies the pards and Jaffar have all become gold, too, all become the sun, pouring molten into her, pleasure so wonderful and so hot and so light at the same time that it doesn't limit itself to but her cunny or her guts: spirals of sunlight now uncurl inside of her from her womb, travel up her viscera, pour down her throat until all of her glows. 

All of her lovers now flow into her so that they become the one being, each thrust inside of her surging up her limbs so that her legs, her arms, her fingers become extensions of those thrusts, waves, rippling upon the bed in time with their undulations. Each time Jaffar rocks into her, so does her body rock into the bed, flow onto it a river flooding over its banks; slow, perfect, their thrusts beat a hypnotic, triple rhythm through her body, all a perfect song of heartbeats, moans, sighs punctuated by the rhythms of her taking. A river of gold, like the legends she has heard of the sunset upon the Nile; Jaffar's eyelashes fluttering upon her cheeks like birds flying past, the pards' purrs the ripples of heat rising from the desert sands. 

"My sweet," Jaffar sobs into her shoulder, and never has he meant it so keenly; _this was meant to be but a perversion,_ he laughs into her mind, _something for a dirty old man to look at, a woman penetrated thrice, no, four times, in all holes;_ he cackles inside of her a madman. _Instead have I made you into sweetness, all of you honey itself, oh, amber; take me, my beloved sweet, take me and drown me in your amber._

 _Then, come,_ she but calls to him and wraps about him her sunlight's wings; _come, my beloved sweet, come, fall into my love._

And with a sigh as soft as a moth's wings, he does. He tumbles into her, flows into her, hours of sweet anticipation now bursting out of him undammed. So deeply is she entwined with him that she can feel each and every pulse of his cock, each and every pulse of his sperm now flooding her insides; neither can tell which one of them it is who now moves the shadow-pricks to gently milk Jaffar's release out of him, massaging him with their thrusts. Even the slight nausea she now feels from being so full--they have been joined for but brief moments, and she knows she cannot stay like this for long--feels pleasurable as Jaffar's joy floods her so, his radiance doubling hers as if the sun and the moon were shining together in the sky. 

But he is finished, and immediately aware of her discomfort; as he crashes onto her body, he lets out of his mouth a string of magic syllables once more, them all now tinkling onto the floor like pins from a maiden shaking out her hair. And like a maiden, Jaffar sighs in his gladness soft and sweet, holding Yassamin against his body, his eyes closed in ecstasy now that they are once again completely alone.

 _You don't have to,_ she tells him before he thinks of it, thinks of withdrawing from her cunny, even if she feels a little sore. For he feels so wonderful, his weight and his presence inside of her body anchoring her into the bed, into a deep calmness, that she feels she would now become entirely restless were he to withdraw from her. _I would not mind if you were to_ \--and now, she yawns out loud, thoroughly exhausted by all that has been done to her, _fall asleep inside of me,_ she murmurs into his mind. 

Yet she cannot hear his answer before she has drifted off herself, drifted off in a golden ship down a river of gold, sailing into a vast golden sea of sleep. 

***

When Yassamin awakens, it is to a red sea of agony, fed by a delta of pain-rivers flowing up from between her legs, immersing her entire body as she stirs into consciousness. At first, she is aware of but a soft, almost pleasant throbbing in her cunny from its pleasuring; then, a cruder, dirtier pain from the violence of her ravishment, as if the openings of her cunny and her arse were but open wounds; and above them, the sharpest and deepest of all these pains, the resumed contractions and tearings of her womb. Again, her womb is packed hard and tight and thick with blackened blood; again, it is shot through with sharp, lancing pain from its cramping, mixed with the duller pain of her internal bleeding. In comparison, the welts given to her by Jaffar's cane and the pards' claws and teeth--probably brutal to anyone else's eyes--feel no worse than little scratches, such as those a house-cat might have given her.

Yet this time, Jaffar is so entwined with her that as he lies there, the same pain now blankets him, too, a womb of spirit within his hips now curling in on itself in agony; he opens his eyes, his face pressed into the pillow, and looks at Yassamin in horror. Even between his own legs, he can feel the blood bursting out, trickling out of his spirit-cunny as his awakening bowels press upon it from behind, the womb-sealing spell long since undone; indeed, he cannot be sure whether the movements of his _own_ guts have now triggered Yassamin's contractions. He feels as heavy as a mountain, weighed into the bed with the pain and the soreness, a great lethargy consuming his every limb; yet, he knows he must act swiftly before the pain overwhelms them both.

He crawls out of bed to seek out the opium, his cunny slurping in a most awful way as he straightens out his body, clots of blood and womb lining spattering onto his thighs; he is shocked, horrified at parts of his body falling out of him like this, bleeding profusely like this, never having experienced this before. _Is this how it truly is for a woman each month?_ he wonders, _or is it only thanks to what I did to her that it is this bad?_ Now, the feel of blood spattering onto his thighs is so real that he reaches out to mop himself between the legs only to find smooth male genitals there, a smooth sack and a smoother perineum, despite the sense of wetness not having gone anywhere.

He looks at Yassamin, and she is now so pale, he himself so faint that he does not expect for her to answer. Quickly, he measures out great, thick spoonfuls of opium syrup for them both, mixing them into two little cupfuls of warm cream; even this mixture, he heats up not with a lantern's flame but with a whispered heat-rune, not having any time to waste. His head is spinning so that it is hard for him to balance on his knees upon the bed as he leans down to offer Yassamin her little cupful; only once he is sure she has swallowed the contents does he allow himself to lie down beside her and swallow his own bitter mouthful.

"You should never do that," Yassamin slurs, clutching the cup in her hand, her knuckles white. "Have you any water?"

"Do what?" Jaffar says, now too weak to get up and fetch any; with the last of his strength, he condenses water out of the air, squeezes it out of the ointments they'd used, enough to fill Yassamin's cup with a few tablespoonfuls.

"Thank you." Grateful, she sips from her cup, then lets it fall from her hand. "But I mean you having tended to me first. All the medical books say that if you and your comrade are both wounded, you should tend to your own wounds first, so that you may help others. You are of no use to anyone if..." she mumbles and lets the cup fall from her hand, "if you pass out."

He but sends to her a laugh, now unable to speak himself--it is clear that she, being more familiar with this kind of pain, is better at dealing with it than he is, seeing as she is able to lecture him even now. _My little comrade-in-arms._

 _I have dragged you into my body's battlefield. I am sorry,_ she thinks at him.

 _Hush, my sweet,_ he tells her, his tenderness pressing like a gentle hand upon her head. _Rest._

She knows why he is telling her this--if she hangs on to the pain and keeps on tensing herself, it will take longer for the opium to start working, and she would rather not be in pain a moment longer. Therefore, she but lies there and breathes, waits until the poppy unfurls the petals of its mercy and the golden sunlight of love-happiness pours into her flesh once more. 

As soon as she is able to move, she murmurs a rune to cleanse the blood from her cunny and her thighs; swiftly, she rolls up a fresh wad of cotton and tucks it inside of herself to soak up the bleeding, then lies down once more. 

Little by little, the agonies dissolve from her hips and only the slight nausea of the opium itself remains; the same is true for Jaffar, he astonished at the difference the opium makes, so terrible had his pains been. 

She, in turn, is astonished at how astonished he is. "I thought you knew," she murmurs, he having looked inside of her before.

He but shakes his head. "I have always kept a safe distance from the pain, so that it could not suck me in the way it did now. Truly, I cannot remember the last time I felt a pain as terrible," he says, trying to now think of those times when--perhaps, when her father's guards had whipped him to within an inch of his life--

"Hush," Yassamin says, gathering him into her arms, sharing the warmth of her body with his by nestling close, by wrapping a blanket around them both. To her, the very thought of digging around for unpleasantries, negativities seems like a form of blasphemy when they are enjoying this rare blessing, the magical happiness and calm brought on by opium. 

And Jaffar hears this thought of hers, hugging her, groaning in delight. "That's more like it. The Yassamin of a few days ago would never have said that," he murmurs.

"You're right," she whispers, her eyes distant. She had been too busy thinking of all things miserable. But now, those miseries feel ancient, as if an entire different world now that Jaffar's scoured her clean, burned away from her all her sorrow. Even without the opium, she would feel light, relieved, exorcised of her demons. "Thank you," she says and kisses his hand.

He regards her there in silence for a while, his eyes flickering back and forth, a little frown of distress gathering upon his brow. "I'm so sorry for neglecting you," he says, his voice a soft, pained meaow. "I promise upon my life that I shall never let this happen again. Even if we have to schedule a good thrashing for you every week--"

She shakes her head, smiling at him. "Love does not work according to schedule, and you know it."

"Rubbish. Why would God have decreed the five daily prayers otherwise? Prayer turns us back towards love, connects our minds with God's love whenever we have turned away from Him. He knew men to be flighty and easily distracted creatures, quick to forget even the most important things; He knew that we needed to be constantly reminded of what's good for us."

She but grins and rocks her hips playfully. "Are you sure you would be up to it five times a day?"

He slaps her arse. "You cheeky minx. I mean that from this day on, I will _listen_ to you five times daily. Every time we gather for prayer, we will each check upon the other. Even if I am in the shabestan, I will still be aware of prayer-times; before each prayer, I will turn my mind towards you and see how you are feeling. And in the evenings, we will act accordingly, give to each other what we need. No more guessing, no more surprises at the bedroom door; only a steady awareness of each other throughout the day."

"Jaffar!" she laughs, a little nervously. "That sounds almost tyrannical. That you would be constantly checking upon me..."

"But you know it is everything but," he says. "Besides, does God not do the same to you each day? Do you not reveal your thoughts, your hopes to Him in your prayers?"

She shakes her head. "I asked for this, did I not? The moment I fear you turn into an ordinary man, the one who is oblivious to his wife, you go out of your way to do the opposite--five times the opposite!"

He kisses her hand. "And I promise to do so only in love and in care," he says. "You can always just turn to me and tell me to bugger off, you know," he grins. "'I wish to be left alone now, Jaffar,' you can tell me, every time you feel as if I pry." 

She raises her eyebrow. "I think you are hoping there's a slap in it for you."

"I am serious. If you feel five times is too much... twice, then? Or once?" he now says, serious after he realises how nervous this is making her. "Humour an old man and his poor memory--after all, that is the only reason I am suggesting such an arrangement. I would not make you suffer because of my carelessness again."

She clasps both of his hands in hers. "Afternoon. When we're done teaching the children." That, she is sure she can take. "Besides, you will never be able to concentrate on your devices otherwise."

He kisses her head. "Done."

"Speaking of your devices," she asks. "I am sorry for interrupting your project. How far did you get?"

"And I am again going to have to tell you not to apologise, my love!" he says. "The shapes that took you tonight were as far as I got without the wish-fulfilling crystals. And after what you and Zahra said, I decided to give up on the idea. You're right; it's too dangerous. Far too dangerous."

She smiles. "Do you know what I think?"

"I _could_ find out, but I would rather have you tell me," he says and grins. "What is it?"

"I lie here and listen as he says 'without wish-fulfilling crystals' when he is a wish-fulfilling crystal himself," she whispers, smiling so much her cheeks ache, she not having been this happy in days. "For I have spoken to you my heart's desire, and you have made it real." And now, she shudders, thinking of how terribly it could have all turned out, had she entrusted her desires to the hands of some capricious demon-crystals, some utterly amoral djinn. "Forgive me the comparison to crystals--I take that back. You are better than any crystal could ever be," she says, tears now filling her eyes as her heart swells and swells, her happiness so overwhelming that any moment now, her chest will burst. "My guardian angel, my dark prince in the mirror; you were there at the very birth of my desire and never have you failed to fulfill it to the utmost."

He wants to make light of it, wants to joke about how this is true _except_ for those times he spends too many hours in the shabestan, but he hasn't the heart: with a soft, feline moan, he captures her in his arms. "Says the woman without whom I would not even know what desire meant, what love meant," he sighs. "Are you still in any pain?"

"No," she whispers into his shoulder, her hand upon his heart; the feel of his stubble against her cheek the most wonderful, the most safe thing for her in the world. "You are better than the opium, but you know that, too."

"It does not hurt to hear it," he says with the delight of a youth. "But, my sweet, we have not had nearly enough rest. Do you think you can sleep?" he asks, the opium sometimes making it more difficult for one to achieve restful sleep.

"Mmm. I am not sure. But you've exhausted yourself, my love. Don't you dare cast one more spell!"

He stretches and lets out a leonine yawn. "I think I am tired enough for sleep. You can slip into my sleep, if you like."

 _Gladly,_ she whispers to him with her mind, making herself comfortable in his arms.

And as she closes her eyes, before her stretch out rivers, lakes, seas of gold: for Jaffar has spread his wings and is now flying high, high in the sunlight, soaring over the kingdom of sleep. As the great Simurgh glows with the divine radiance, so do the tips of his golden wing-feathers now glow as she spies them from the corner of her eye; the waters below glitter molten underneath them, the horizon painted with clouds that are as ribands of purple and rose. 

Jaffar beats his wings once, twice, thrice and ever higher they soar and soar, their hearts as light as air; onwards they fly, on and on until they become one with the gold and the sunlight and the sea. 

***

END

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some doodles of Yassamin, Jaffar and the sex panthers [here.](http://aikainkauna.tumblr.com/post/158732380203/jaffar-with-his-magickal-skillz-creates-actual)
> 
> Freely rebloggable promo post for the fic [here.](http://aikainkauna.tumblr.com/post/159347425518/fic-a-darkness-in-bloom-jaffarprincess-nc-17) Do let me know if you enjoyed it!


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